The Savannah Bananas sold out two games for August 29 and 30 at PNC Park. The team is so popular, you had to enter a lottery just to get a chance to pay $35 – $125 dollars for a ticket.
For those of you who do not follow baseball or pop culture, the Savannah Bananas are an exhibition barnstorming team. They play a variation of baseball known as Banana Ball. The players engage in dance routines, comedic sketches, and other performances between and during innings. In other words, they are a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters, although their games are unscripted and competitive. Most of players are former minor league and college players, with former MLB athletes as occasional special guest players.
The team was founded in 2016 and until 2022 competed as a collegiate summer team in the Coastal Plain League, where they won three championships. In 2018, they began playing exhibition games outside of the CPL season under the Banana Ball format. In 2023, the team moved entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring teams, the Party Animals, the Firefighters, and the Texas Tailgaters.
The team has been featured by ESPN and Sports Illustrated because of their entertaining antics and viral videos. ESPN+ released a miniseries about them called Bananaland. As of 2023, the team had over six million followers on TikTok, more than any MLB team.
In 2020, the Savannah Party Animals debuted as the opponent in Banana Ball games, similar to the relationship between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. Unlike Globetrotter exhibitions, the teams are more even and the Bananas do not win all games.
However, more than a century before the Bananas there was another popular barnstorming team that relied on a unique marketing schtick.
The Israelite House of David was formed in 1903 in Missouri. It was a Christian Community that sought to reunite the twelve tribes of Israel to prepare for and await the return of Jesus in the year 2000.
The group’s founder, Benjamin Purnell was a baseball enthusiast and encouraged playing the game as a way of building physical and spiritual discipline. The group lived communally and placed a great deal of value on physical labor and activity, citing the Apostle Paul who worked as a tent maker during his missions. Members of the group were strict vegetarians, and espoused celibacy outside marriage. The famous long hair and beards were worn citing the book of Leviticus.
They began playing competitive baseball in 1913. In 1920, they became a barnstorming team and traveled the country making money for the colony and using the games as an opportunity to proselytize. Their long hair and beards became a marketing novelty, drawing crowds wherever they played. One of the biggest draws was their “famous pepper games.” There was a time when people loved to watch players warm up with what amounted to an improvisational juggling act.
The Waynesburg Volunteer Fire Department’s films captured a game in Waynesburg between a barnstorming Pittsburgh Pirates team and the House of David. It was very common in those days for MLB teams or their players to barnstorm to supplement their relatively low salaries.
The House baseball team toured our county at least four other times that I found and played all-star teams of local players. In the late 1930’s, The House of David Longbeards’ basketball team packed the gyms in both Carmichaels and Waynesburg.
By the late 1920s, in need of more skilled players, the House of David began hiring professional players. The most notable was an aging Grover Cleveland Alexander. They also offered a contract to Babe Ruth after he retired. However, the team withdrew the offer because of the slugger’s legendary hedonistic lifestyle. These recruited players were required to grow beards (or wear fake beards).
The team was known for its skill and played against some of the greatest teams in the country. Because of their egalitarian religious beliefs, they played against any competitors willing to take them on. Their schedule included Major League, minor league, independent and Negro League teams. The team even had its own portable light system which it would set up in various ballparks around the country in order to play more lucrative night games.
By the late 1920s, Benjamin Purnell had come into some legal troubles surrounding sexual indiscretions with the women of the community and was expelled from the group. The community divided into two factions. The first was led by Mary Purnell, wife of Benjamin. The second faction did not believe Mary to have any authority over the group and was led by a council of elders.
Mary’s faction, the smaller of the two, purchased a plot of land across the street from the original community and became the City of David. Both the Israelite House of David and Mary’s City of David fielded teams, and for publicity purposes, both used the House of David name.
Mary’s City of David sent out barnstorming teams from 1930 until 1940 and then again from 1946 until 1955. Throughout this period, there were numerous teams which bore the House of David name and beards for publicity purposes. Many of these teams just “borrowed” the name and had no real affiliation with the original team. The most famous of these was probably the Black House of David, an all African-American barnstorming team that played solely within the Negro Leagues
Despite the Bananas incredible success, they have a way to go to catch their predecessors from a business perspective.
At its peak, The House of David ran the Eden Springs amusement park. It was the Midwest’s premiere tourist attraction during the first half of the 20th century. It featured a zoo, resort, dairy farm, restaurant, arcade, movie theater, bowling alley, amphitheater, and the world’s largest miniature locomotive set.
Their other businesses included the making and distribution of ice cream, grape juice, string instruments, and jewelry. It is also believed the cult invented the waffle cone, first introduced at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.
Maybe Bananaland can be more than a documentary. Sounds like the perfect name for a baseball-themed resort.
