The Bananas’ and Party Animals’ rosters do not lack talent by any means, as they are full of former college and professional players making the lineup.
When it comes to finding players, owner Jesse Cole said they are looking for talented, entertaining players that have played professional baseball, can do trick plays, dance, and provide entertainment.
“We’re fortunate now where a lot of them reach out to us, they’re very interested and want to be a part of the show, and they want to play all over the country in front of sold-out crowds,” Cole said. “There are two different brands, the Party Animals are a little crazy, a little wild, and the Bananas are the players you take home to mom, so we try to balance that out, see who fits better for each one, who has been a Banana for longer, and we mix it up.”
While the Party Animals are the main team that the Bananas play, a handful of challenger teams are on the schedule looking to step up to the plate and take on the Bananas. The Bananas are typically the ones who will play the challenger team, but the Party Animals also have some games against them.
This tour’s Party Animals roster includes Jake Skole, Jason Swan, Dalton Cornett, Tanner Thomas, Reece Hampton, Bryson Bloomer, Dustin Baber, Bret Helton, Chase Achuff, Brandon Sherman, Dylan Porter, Joe Lytle, Collin Ledbetter, Tucker Perry, Jake Lialios, Sean Fluke, Drew Gillespie, Carson Goldsmith, Zach Blankenship, and Garrett Delano. The team is coached by Mike Vavasis and Sam Claycamp, who also play.
This tour’s Savannah Bananas roster includes Bill Leroy, Malachi Mitchell, Eric Jones Jr., Mat Wolf, DR Meadows, Ryan Cox, Michael Deeb, Jackson Olson, Noah Bridges, Alex Ziegler, Matt Malatesta, Kyle Luigs, Dalton Mauldin, Dakota Albritton, Danny Hosley, Dan Oberst, Jared Donalson, Dakota McFadden, Christian Dearman, Zack Phillips, Nolan Daniel, Ryan Kellogg, Connor Higgins, Bill Lee, Vincent DeRubeis, and DJ “The Invader.” The team is coached by Tyler Gillum and Adam Virant with the help of the dancing first base coach Maceo and Reginald Horton.
With the expansive and talented lineup on both sides, they all had different routes that got them on the team today.
Jackson Olson, a 25-year-old third baseman from New Milford, Connecticut, played college ball at the University of Hartford before playing with the Bananas’ summer ball league in 2019.
Once Olson finished college, he was working with Major League Baseball and was on an MLB stadium tour, ranking the different stadiums across the country, but he knew he wanted to find a way to get back into playing the game he loved.
“I wanted to play baseball again, saw the Banana’s TikTok, posted a video saying how cool I thought they were, and Jesse, the owner, reached out and talked for about two months and finally offered me a player role,” Olson said. “I was nervous over the two months because I was on an MLB stadium tour at that time, so I was ranking different stadiums and kind of just like, I was having fun, but I was also wanting to play, so I’m like, ‘Alright, I’m doing this stadium tour, but when am I going to play for the Bananas?’ That was kind of my thought process. I was at the College World Series making content, and he reached out and called me to offer me a position.”
Olson announced in the summer of 2022 that he would be playing for the Bananas.
“My favorite part about being on the Bananas is the team atmosphere, also the fans, which is unbelievable. Banana fans are the best, but the team atmosphere – everyone here is just so on the same page and shooting for the same goals, and I think that’s cool,” Olson said.
Nolan Daniel, a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher from Dublin, Georgia, who played college ball at Purdue University and the University of New Orleans, has only been with the team since the Indianapolis games on June 30 and July 1.
In Daniel’s short time with the Bananas, he said that seeing the excitement from the little kids has been his favorite part.
“To see the little kids, especially when they are coming up and asking for autographs, and I’ll sign it, and I’ll look down at them, and they’re giggling and like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just got it!” I remember being that little kid, and it is pretty cool to be able to do that for someone else, and it’s just amazing because they look up to me like that, and it makes me feel really good,” Daniel said.
Dakota “Stilts” Albritton, the world’s tallest baseball player at 10’9”, is a 22-year-old from Ellaville, Georgia, a little one red light town with a population of 1400. “Stilts,” as his teammates call him, pitches, hits, plays first, and every now and then will pinch run.
When coming up with something unique to be on the team, Jesse Cole and Albritton came up with the idea of him being the world’s tallest pitcher by wearing his stilts.
“Whenever I was about ten or eleven years old, my mom bought them for me for Christmas, and it didn’t take no time–I jumped on them. First time I ever put my feet on some stilts, I was running across my yard in them. I put them up for ten years after that, and in 2021, I came to the Bananas World Tour Tryouts for the first-ever professional team they had, and me and Jesse Cole came up with the idea of hitting baseballs on the stilts; so that’s how that happened,” Albritton said.
Traveling the country and seeing the smiles the team puts on people’s faces are Albritton’s favorite things about being a Banana.
Another unique player on the field, DJ “The Invader,” is a 25-year-old right-handed pitcher from Jacksonville, Florida.
What makes him so interesting? He pitches in a space helmet. With a mustache on it.
“I recently just graduated college last year, I won a national championship at my old school, and I was out of baseball right after the season ended, and one of the front office people hit me up and was like, “Hey, we’re holding a tryout, would you like to come try out for the team?” And I was like, “Yeah, absolutely,” and I had to bring something unique and different to the table. After that, I decided I’m going to do something different that nobody else can do on a baseball field, which is pitch with a helmet on, so that’s where I got this idea from. Throughout this whole tour, I kind of wanted to create a character where nobody knows what I look like, and ever since then, it has been going great,” DJ said.
DR “The Doc” Meadows, partially known for his outstanding catches while doing backflips, is a 24-year-old center fielder from Vidalia, Georgia.
Before joining the Bananas, Meadows played one year at Chipola College, one year at South Georgia State College, and three years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.
“I graduated last May with baseball, and I figured I was done with baseball until I got a call saying, ‘Hey, do you want to play six games in the summer series?’ and I said yes, and they said they might need me for the Coastal Plains League, which was the summer collegiate team and happened to be the next week I was down there playing for the last half of the college season,” Meadows said.
Next, nicknamed “The Songbird of our Generation,” Dalton Mauldin, a 27-year-old talented singer and an equally talented infielder from Lake City, Florida, has been with the team since 2021. Mauldin played college ball at the College of Central Florida in Ocala, then transferred to Bethune Cookman in Daytona Beach, where he redshirted because of some elbow issues, then transferred to Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville.
“Jesse reached out to me on Twitter in like 2018 when I was at Bethune Cookman in Daytona and was like, ‘Hey, I own the Bananas, and we would love for you to come play,” and I had seen them a little bit, but I was already going to play summer ball in Wyoming that year. The next couple of years, I was working on music and told him no, it just didn’t work out. He called me my senior year in 2021 at Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville and said, “Dalton, we’re doing a Breakfast Bowl in the summer; I’d love to have you come out,” and I was like, “Alright, I’ll give it a shot,” and I fell in love with it. You can’t beat this. I wouldn’t want to do anything else at all,” Mauldin said.
Off the field, Mauldin is a talented singer with many songs on different streaming platforms but currently enjoys getting to do both baseball and music.
“A lot of people ask, you know, would I rather choose music or baseball, like what’s my goal, and I love them both so much, and if I could do one of them for the rest of my life, I’d be so happy. But right now, I have the option to do both, and I am just blessed to be here every day,” Mauldin said.
Mauldin recently released his newest single, “Miss You, Love You,” and played a new song before the Akron crowd titled “How’d You Keep Her,” which will be released on August 11.
Mauldin’s favorite thing about being a Banana goes much deeper than the game.
“Setting an example as far as having fun with the game, understanding that it is just a game and that it always be just a game – even at the highest level, even at the lowest level, it’s just a game. It doesn’t define you after you are done with baseball, while you are doing it, you are not a baseball player: you play baseball. What’s so cool about this is, like, we’re on a pedestal now, at the point where we are, from, like, social media getting us to this spot. What’s cool is like, for example, a lot of kids come to these games, and we get to talk and hang out with them, get to take pictures, we do this before the game, we do this after the game, and then a lot of the times in MLB, we’ll try to bridge that gap where you know who Bryce Harper is, but you don’t know anything about him. But, when you come here, you get to meet everybody and kind of make it more human – we’re all the same, no matter what the platform is, we’re all the same, we’re here for the same reason, we want to have fun, meet everybody, have a good time, and that’s my favorite part about this,” Mauldin said.
Dubbed the “Heartthrob” of the team, Noah Bridges, a 24-year-old right fielder from Four Oaks, North Carolina, though originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, found himself on the team after actually playing against the Bananas back when they were in the CPL, and he was on the Wilmington Sharks.
“When the Bananas were a college team, I played in the league they were in, I played against them, and they came to my home stadium–I played with the Wilmington Sharks. Biko was our announcer, and I played center field. The away broadcast, they set up behind center field at my home ballpark, so basically, when the Bananas came, and we played against them, Biko was right behind me the whole time, and I basically had a headset on, and I was talking to him while playing against him and the broadcast interaction fan stuff, they loved it, and were like, “We loved it, we want to hear Noah again. We love talking to him,” so after that, Zack, our entertainment director, gave me his card, and was like, ‘If you don’t have any other plans, come play with us for a little bit if you want to,’ and that was basically my tryout, that six games in the summer series,” Bridges said.
For Bridges, fitting into the atmosphere of the Bananas came naturally.
“It’s pretty cool being with the Bananas because, in college, I loved to have fun; I just played passionately. To me, it’s like the fans come to watch us, so in college, I would always try and interact with fans as much as I could, but it’s kind of like, the college ball scene, especially being D1, it’s pretty serious–if you were to talk to the fans, it’s like, “Oh you’re not really locked in on the game.” and to me, that didn’t really make sense because they’re here to watch the game, you got to at least acknowledge them,” Bridges said. “So, when I came for the Bananas, it was the first thing, I was like, ‘I don’t have to hit for like six batters,’ I just ran and hopped in the stands, and it was allowed, and it was encouraged. It’s the best, and to me, it’s like just the people you can talk to and meet, you get to be such an influence on them, and they look up to you like superheroes, especially the kids. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around it because we’re just a bunch of normal dudes. If you look at us, we’re just dancing around, having a good time. Inside the fishbowl, we don’t really kind of get a grasp on it, but then every time we have a game, there are moments where like, ‘Oh, these kids and everybody just looks up to us.’ When we put on the yellow or the white, it’s pretty sweet. The impact we get to make is awesome.”
While all the players are incredibly talented, entertaining, and loved by fans, the game wouldn’t be complete without an equally talented, entertaining, and beloved home plate umpire with all the moves.
Vincent Chapman, a 40-year-old umpire from Texarkana, Texas, has been umping games since his sophomore year in high school.
In 2015, Chapman went viral on Facebook with twelve million views, landing his video on Ellen Degeneres’ EllenTube, where the Bananas saw it and reached out to him to be their umpire in December of 2021 and where he has been ever since.
“The Savannah Bananas are fans first entertainment, and every time we go to a different city, different town, or different stadium, our main focus is to entertain and let the fans leave happier than they ever came and tell everybody that it’s the greatest show in sports. What we stand for is the reason I do it; it’s for the fans. I love to entertain, and I love making people smile and people happy. The game is real; the game is not scripted as far as who is going to win and who is going to lose, so I do have a difficult job of making sure I call a good game but making sure that I entertain as well,” Chapman said. “I love my job, I mean, this is the greatest job in the world because I get to entertain, but I also get to umpire.”