Banana Ball Rosters, Explained: Who Plays for Every Team

Banana Ball has six teams, more than 150 players, and a roster-building system that looks nothing like Major League Baseball's. Some players kept their spots because fans voted to keep them. Others were picked in the league's first-ever player draft. At least one of them earned his job by pitching on stilts.

Here's how Banana Ball rosters actually get built, which names you'll recognize on the field, and how to look up any player in the league.

Six teams, six rosters

The Banana Ball Championship League fields six clubs:

• Savannah Bananas — the original, and still the biggest draw
• Party Animals — the Bananas' longest-running rivals
• Firefighters
• Texas Tailgaters
• Loco Beach Coconuts — an expansion club
• Indianapolis Clowns — an expansion club reviving one of the most famous names in barnstorming baseball

The Coconuts and Clowns are the newcomers. The Clowns name carries real weight: the original Indianapolis Clowns were a legendary Negro Leagues barnstorming team, the club a teenaged Hank Aaron played for before he reached the majors.

Every club, its record and its results live on the Banana Ball teams page, and you can see who's playing whom on the full Banana Ball schedule.

How Banana Ball rosters get built

Adding two expansion teams created a problem every league eventually faces: where do the players come from? Banana Ball's answer was a draft — the first player draft in league history — with a fan-voting twist bolted onto the front of it.

Step 1: fans pick the untouchables

Before anything else, fans voted on which three players each existing team got to keep, no questions asked. Not the coaches, not a front office — fans. If you have ever wondered whether Banana Ball actually means it when it says the fans come first, this is the answer. Three roster spots per club were decided by public vote.

Step 2: coaches protect the rest

Once the fan votes locked in, each incumbent coach protected a further block of players from their existing squad. Between the fan picks and the coach picks, the core of each returning roster was safe before a single draft pick was made.

Step 3: the expansion teams draft

Everybody left unprotected went into the draft pool, along with invited college players, pros and players from Banana Ball's development ranks. The two expansion teams got extra picks in every round so they could build real rosters instead of scraping together leftovers, and the Indianapolis Clowns held the first overall selection.

That's a genuinely different model. Instead of a draft that only feeds new talent in, Banana Ball ran one that redistributed existing talent across six teams — which is why familiar faces showed up in unfamiliar uniforms.

The names to know

Jackie Bradley Jr. (Indianapolis Clowns)

The Clowns used that first overall pick on Jackie Bradley Jr. — a Gold Glove center fielder and a 2018 World Series champion with the Boston Red Sox. He's the highest-profile former major leaguer in the league, and he committed to the full Banana Ball slate rather than a cameo appearance. The circus catches that made him famous in Boston translate almost too well to a league where the outfield wall is a suggestion.

Dakota "Stilts" Albritton (Savannah Bananas)

Albritton pitches, hits and fields on stilts. On them he stands close to eleven feet tall, which makes him the tallest pitcher in baseball by a margin that isn't close. It sounds like a gimmick until you watch him actually deliver a pitch from up there.

Kelsie Whitmore (Savannah Bananas)

Whitmore is one of the most prominent women playing baseball at this level anywhere, and she's a two-way player — she pitches and she hits. She's also a useful reminder that Banana Ball rosters aren't a novelty act made up of people who couldn't play. The entertainment is real, but so is the baseball.

The Bananas core

Savannah's roster also carries the players fans search for most: catcher Bill LeRoy, Jackson Olson, Kyle "KJ" Jackson and RobertAnthony "Coach RAC" Cruz among them. These are the faces in the viral clips, and a big part of why the Bananas remain the toughest ticket in the league.

Why Banana Ball rosters don't look like baseball rosters

A Banana Ball roster is built for a different job than a baseball roster. Because the rules reward showmanship as much as run prevention, teams need players who can do both. That shapes who makes the cut:

• Two-way players are the norm, not the exception. Rosters are smaller than a pro baseball club's, so pitchers hit and hitters pitch.
• Coaches play. Banana Ball coaches aren't confined to the dugout, and several are active parts of the show.
• Specialists are real. A player whose defining skill is a bat flip, a dance or a stilt-assisted fastball has genuine roster value here in a way he never would in affiliated ball.
• Nobody hides. Compact rosters over a long touring season mean almost everyone plays.

How to look up any Banana Ball player

Rosters shift between seasons — that's what the draft was for — so the fastest way to find a specific player is to go straight to the numbers:

• Banana Ball player stats — search any player and pull up their batting average, home runs, RBI, OPS and hitting splits for the current season.
• Team stats and records — see how each of the six clubs is performing as a whole.
• Teams — start from a club and work down to its players.
• Where to watch — catch the players live instead of reading about them.

If you're trying to work out which team someone plays for now, the player stats page is the source of truth: it's updated from live league data rather than a roster sheet published before the season.

FAQ

How many teams are in Banana Ball?

Six: the Savannah Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, Loco Beach Coconuts and Indianapolis Clowns. The Coconuts and Clowns are the two expansion clubs.

How do players get on a Banana Ball roster?

Through a combination of fan votes, coach protections and the league's player draft. Fans voted to keep three players on each existing team, coaches protected additional players from their squads, and everyone left over entered a draft pool that also included college players, pros and players from the league's development ranks.

Who was the first overall pick in the Banana Ball draft?

Jackie Bradley Jr., taken by the Indianapolis Clowns. He's a former Gold Glove outfielder and a World Series champion, and he's the most decorated ex-major leaguer on a Banana Ball roster.

Can you look up individual Banana Ball player stats?

Yes. Full season stat lines for every player — batting average, home runs, RBI, OPS and splits — are on the Banana Ball player stats page.

Do Banana Ball players change teams?

They do. The expansion draft moved a significant number of players between clubs, so a player you remember on one roster may now be on another. Check the current player stats rather than relying on memory.

How many players are in the league?

More than 150 across the six rosters. Each club carries a compact squad relative to a pro baseball team, which is part of why so many Banana Ball players are two-way contributors.

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Photo: baseballmapper / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)