I didn’t attend either of the Savannah Bananas events at PNC Park over Labor Day weekend. However, I know quite a few folks who did, and the reviews were all positive.

If you are coming here looking for the old, fuddy-duddy, baseball purist “That’s not real baseball, so I’m not gonna let myself like it!” hot take, you’ve come to the wrong place. No one is going to be yelling at clouds here.

Not today anyway.

I’ve got nothing against the Bananas. In fact, I praise them for what they do and how they pull it off. They are marketing wizards. They are a little bit Harlem Globetrotters, “And-1,” WWE, Pat McAfee and “Dude Perfect” all rolled into one.

Whatever they are doing, they are doing it right. They’ve taken the slowest team sport in the world and are fascinating the TikTok generation with it.

That ain’t easy.

Those sports entertainment tour stop displays aren’t my cup of tea. Then again, that’s why some folks drink coffee instead.

Savannah Bananas highlights fly around my social media feeds. I’ll watch a clip. I may get a chuckle, I may not. But with no children in my household, I’m not dropping 400 bucks to watch two hours of it.

Those who did for two nights on the North Shore sure seemed to get their money’s worth.

And the Savanna Bananas with the walk off win in the most unbelievable atmosphere ever. pic.twitter.com/iZOLrFNs6x

— GFISH (Greg) (@GFish_2002) August 30, 2025

Savannah Bananas packed PNC Park!Entertaining. A lot of fun! pic.twitter.com/GkpAiEReF2

— Jennifer Borrasso (@JenBorrasso) August 31, 2025

It's absolutely insane that 25 years into PNC Parks existence that, 2013 Wild Card Game aside, a weekend of the Savannah Bananas shattered atmosphere and attendance records.

You had TWO AND A HALF DECADES to find someone to build this team and NOONE has done it. Sad.

— Derrick Paul (@derrick_wvu) August 31, 2025

Savannah bananas, two sold out crowds in Pittsburgh, no problems, fantastic events sold out stadiums, with all the crap in this city, thank you Savannah bananas for bringing two nights of nothing but joy and fun and excitement with no problems. This town needs more of that.

— Jim Ellenbogen (@jim_ellenbogen) August 31, 2025

The Savannah Bananas at PNC Park this weekend will be the most exciting baseball we've seen in Pittsburgh since 2014.

Let that sink in.

— Jordan York (@JYorkFootball) August 29, 2025

Savannah Bananas proved that if baseball was actually good/entertaining in the city of Pittsburgh then the streets and seats would be packed

— Josh.o (@OllieTXRanger23) August 30, 2025

More fans came to see the Savannah Bananas at PNC Park than to the last how many Pirates games combined???

— "Thunder Dan" Palyo (@ThunderDanDFS) September 1, 2025

Yeahhhhh, there’s just one thing about a lot of those posts I can’t get behind. That repeated attempt at juxtaposing “Banana Ball” success and “Bucco Ball” failure is a false equivalence.

Hey, I get it. No one enjoys a good cheap shot at the Pittsburgh Pirates more than I do. Few people who have ever worked in this market can take a storyline and turn it into a reason to bash Bob Nutting’s ownership like I can.

I consider it … an acquired skill. I take pride in it.

But this is a step too far. To somehow equate an actual competitive game to a sports entertainment performance is an apples-to-motorcycles comparison.

The Bananas are fun for a weekend, not for 82 games. You can only see a guy light a bat on fire, or take an at-bat on stilts, or watch the infield dancing around in unison before a pitch a few times before it’s not new anymore.

Just like the Pirates never being in the playoffs.

It’s not going to be long before the Bananas have to reinvent themselves as the Globetrotters and other such properties have tried to do. That’s a challenge. We’ll see how long they remain an A-list draw once everyone has seen the circus come through town a few times.

They haven’t had 46 years to grow stale since reaching the mountain top, like the Pirates have had. The Pirates don’t get to play against the Texas Tailgaters, the Party Animals or the Firefighters. They have to face the Mets, Dodgers and Cardinals.

The “This is what baseball in Pittsburgh should be” conversation is simply the manifestation of exaggerated anger toward the Nutting ownership’s multiple missteps. That’s like saying the Penguins should emulate “Disney on Ice” because they’re in a playoff rut too.

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Like many online, I’m preconditioned to look at anything good about baseball (as the Bananas are right now), and hold that example aloft as what the Pirates should be attempting to do.

But the Pirates are in the competitive sports realm — to whatever minimal degree they are attempting to compete. The final score matters in their games. The Bananas’ only job — win or lose — is to entertain.

Trust me, I wish the Pirates figured out a way to do that last part more often, independent of their frequent crummy results. Unfortunately, the two teams are working toward entirely different goals, regardless of the fact that baseballs, gloves and bats coincidentally happen to be the same mechanism to get them there.

Most people grasp that, and, sure, I did cherry-pick a few of those responses online to advance my point.

The thing is, there were about 50 more posts of that ilk that I could’ve embedded. The sentiment clearly exists in Pittsburgh. People were making that connection between what the Pirates aren’t and what a bunch of trickshot barnstormers are.

That’s a big perception problem for the Pittsburgh franchise.

In years when the Boston Celtics or New York Knicks have been bad, I don’t think that the Globetrotters rolled through town and you had hundreds of Knicks and Celtics fans saying: “You see? That … THAT is what basketball should be around here!”

Yet that opinion had legs on the North Shore all weekend.

So maybe Nutting should start building around Paul Skenes while he has him to make the team interesting to fans as a competitive product once more.

If not, maybe he should just tell Skenes to start throwing on stilts once every five days.

Hey, think about how many tickets he could sell on “Savannah Skenes bobble-stilts” night.

Listen: Tim Benz and Kevin Gorman talk about the Savannah Bananas, the Pirates, Paul Skenes, Bubba Chandler and more

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