Deconstructing A Velociraptor On A Molten Surface
The horrible weather continued again today, so here is another of my 'creative' efforts because I couldn't be asked to venture outside.
This means it's also time for another blip about an article I've read that caught my interest. This time it was an online article about a baseball team (I must admit I've never watched a game of baseball but the story just grabbed me) called the Savannah Bananas.
The Bananas were founded in 2016 in Savannah, Georgia with the motto 'Fans first, entertain always'. They have since taken baseball by storm.
It all began when the owner, Jesse Cole, visited the Grayson stadium - then the home of the Savannah Sand Gnats (I love the names of baseball teams!) - with his now wife Emily the day after he had proposed to her in front of a sold out crowd at a match in North Carolina, while working as the general manager of the Gastonia Grizzlies (another great name!).
They saw a beautiful old ball park, fell in love with the stadium and heard that the team was leaving. Cole said "We both said "Why don't we give it a shot". We had a big vision."
It didn't come to fruition straight away. When they were given the keys to the stadium in 2015 everything had been stripped out, with the total of their staff being a 24 yr-old team president and three 22 yr-olds straight out of college.
The club launched itself in the local community a month later but were met with huge scepticism - by the end of the year only one season ticket had been sold. They knew they had a lot of convincing to do. The Coles went all in, selling their house and committing all their savings.
They decided to run a competition to name the team. More than 1,000 suggestions were sent in and retired nurse Lyn Moses was the only person to put forward "Bananas'. Coles says "When she said it we said wow, we can really have fun with this brand". It was a big turning point, with the naming announcement going viral in February 2016.
Instead of selling what had only been a handful of tickets, their opening match against Lexington Country in June 2016 became a sell-out, with just over 4,000 people present. Those lucky enough to secure tickets were not to be disappointed. They got to see a Nanas citizen dance team, dancing players, a breakdancing coach and banana pep band and "they saw all the fun we put into it" says Cole.
Six years on, the club have a waiting list of requests for single-game tickets of about 75,000, have accumulated more than 82 million likes on Tik Tok and play at a permanently sold out stadium in the Coastal Plain League Championship series - a summer league for college players.
They still try to do between 5 to 10 things they've never done before at each game - examples being choreographed breakdancing, wearing kilts, stilt walking or even breaking the world record for the most people in banana costumes.
They now plan to depart the league set-up and tour the country. What a story!
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