BALTIMORE – The sellout crowd of more than 45,000 fans at Oriole Park at Camden Yards stood on their feet, screaming and celebrating Saturday’s walk-off home run.
There had been a palpable buzz at the stadium all night long. It started hours before first pitch, as fans packed merchandise booths and waited in food lines — the kinds of lines typically only seen on Opening Day and in October — as soon as the gates opened.
Saturday’s game was closely contested, with the crowd hovering near full capacity the entire night. When it was over, fans reluctantly headed to their car.
They weren’t there to see an Orioles game (the O’s had trouble selling out their two home playoff games last year), or even a Major League Baseball game. They were there to see the Savannah Bananas, an independent barnstorming group of professionals who have, in founder Jesse Cole’s words, “removed the friction in baseball” and play a fast-paced, backflipping brand of “Banana Ball” that’s taken the sports world by storm, generating millions of fans and seemingly growing at warp speed.
“I get it now,” said former Baltimore manager Buck Showalter after the old-school baseball man served as an honorary coach during Friday’s game against an opposing team called the Firefighters. “(The Bananas) are doing a lot of things right. My son said it was like a Caribbean World Series game on steroids.”
