BANANA BALL

To hell with designated hitters: This baseball-like game makes up the rules as it goes along.

The heroes of this charming story are the Savannah Bananas, a goofball gang of athletes whose motto is, “Fans First. Entertain Always.” At their helm is Cole, a baseball-loving Bostonian who went south to pitch in college but didn’t quite have the right stuff to hit the majors. As he puts it, “I wasn’t hugely projectable,” meaning he wasn’t likely to develop the ability to compete with the pitchers in Major League Baseball. Regardless, studying humanities and theater, he also knew that he was a “natural ham” and able entertainer, and he wasn’t about to be kept out of the show. So he decided to pull together a squad that would do for baseball what the Harlem Globetrotters did for basketball. Seeking to change the game and make it move faster, he put a clock on the game to cap it at two hours, allowed batters to steal first, and counted it as an out if a fan caught a foul ball in the stands, among other tweaks. Small-market teams usually “had no shot at all,” but suddenly, the Bananas proved, “the little guys could actually win.” Cole has steadily grown the market for his version of baseball, drawing big crowds through traveling games as well as through the skillful use of social media. He was so successful with his vision that the Red Sox came calling for tips on how to liven up Fenway Park, and Cole had plenty of answers: Do as the Bananas do and have a parade, fireworks, dancing in the streets, and sheer anarchy such that, as one Sox official put it, “This will be like an actual circus coming to our ballpark.” True enough, and this particular circus is reimagining baseball as a game that not only purists and traditionalists can love.

Anyone who can think outside the diamond will enjoy Cole’s entertaining yarn.