What we can learn from Wichita’s Banana Ball experience | Opinion
Banana Ball has come and gone in Wichita after three sold-out games at Equity Bank Park.
And it occurs to me that there are lessons to be learned from banana mania.
I have never seen a Wichita ball park — Equity Bank Park, the former Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, or Wichita State’s Eck Stadium — as full, engaged and energized as it was for the games between Banana Ball’s Loco Beach Coconuts and Firefighters over the weekend.
It was, in just about every way, the baseball experience that was dreamt of when Wichita decided to build the new stadium to replace the historic but decrepit Lawrence-Dumont.
Baseball has become more fan-friendly recently and is undergoing a bit of a resurgence right now, after years of declining attendance and TV ratings.
A pitch clock was introduced to speed up the games, and rule changes now limit shifting players from one side of the field to the other, resulting in more hits and hence more action.
Still, there’s a ways to go, and Banana Ball is doing something right. They don’t just pack 12,000-capacity parks like the Equity, they sell out 100,000-seat football stadiums.
Obviously, we couldn’t and shouldn’t try to recreate Banana Ball’s on-field dancing, incessant music, strange scoring system or extra points for making showboat plays.
Every man on the Wichita Wind Surge is focused on proving he has the talent and work ethic to move up to the majors with the Minnesota Twins. That’s serious business.
But I’m not sure we can attribute the success of Banana Ball only to its on-field showmanship.
A major league flashback
As I waited to get metal-detected on my way into Equity Bank Park for my first Banana Ball game, I could hear a young boy in the next line over quietly singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Intrigued, I caught up with him and his father.
“I’m really excited, this is gonna be fun,” said Braven Jones, age 7.
He’d brought his baseball glove and his ambition was to participate in the game by catching a foul ball. It’s a Banana Ball rule that if a fan makes a clean catch on a foul, the batter is out.
The chance of doing that in a park like the Equity, with safety netting around the entire seating bowl, is hugely unlikely. But on Thursday night, it actually happened. Where I was sitting, I couldn’t see who did it, but good for them.
Braven and his father, Chris, had driven 4 1/2 hours from Farmington, Ark. Chris Jones works for Bentonville-based Walmart on remodeling stores, including the ones in Wichita, and he decided it was the perfect time to bring his son on a business trip.
As I talked with them, it was like reliving my own first Major League game.
My early teen years were spent in a small town in central Arizona. In those days, before domed and air-conditioned stadiums, big-league baseball was a non-starter for Phoenix because even devoted fans weren’t crazy enough to sit out in that summer heat watching a ball game.
I played a lot of baseball, but didn’t watch it a lot and didn’t see my first Major League game until I was 14.
My dad, a mining engineer, was commuting on a weekly basis to Pasadena, Calif., to collaborate on a project with an engineering firm there.
One week, he took me with him, and one evening, he took me to a California Angels game.
When we got there, he told me that if I wanted, I could go down to the field and ask players for their autographs, so I did.
I saw a guy in uniform walking out of a tunnel, leaned over the rail and asked if he’d sign my program. He smiled and said “Sure,” and did.
So I went back up to my seat and my Dad said “Who’d you get?” I said, “this guy, Nolan Ryan.”
Dad almost jumped out of his seat. “Nolan Ryan! He’s the best player in the league!”
That day I became an Angels fan and have been one ever since, even though we’ve only won one World Series in the intervening 50 years. (That World Series was sweet, though).
A path to baseball success
In my 40 years of journalism, I’ve interviewed a lot of athletes, from the collegiate level all the way up to Los Angeles Lakers the day after they won an NBA championship.
I have to say, I’ve never seen a friendlier group of athletes than the Banana Ball players who squared off in Wichita.
As I talked with them, they were unfailingly polite and engaged, even though I was probably asking the same questions they hear in every city they visit.
There’s an old saying in journalism: A good interview is a good conversation. I had several good interviews with the Banana Ball players.
And it wasn’t just me.
The company set up a plaza outside the stadium, where the boys of banana partied with the fans before the game, and stuck around afterward autographing countless gloves, baseballs, hats and jerseys.
What I saw at Banana Ball was thousands of fans making a personal connection with these ballplayers, who they’d never seen before and will probably never see again, except maybe on YouTube.
While our local teams, pro and college, can’t duplicate the showmanship of Banana Ball, those kinds of personal connections are in reach.
And that, sports fans, is the secret to baseball success.
