We Helped Party Animals Win by Catching a Foul Ball at 1st Ever Tour Championship! FULL Breakdown
Hello everyone. What a crazy time we are living in with the party animals taking the first ever tour championship. Welcome everyone to the Banana Breakdown podcast where we’re going to break down everything that happened this weekend. Yep. We’re super excited that the party animals are banana ball tour champions. Uh it’s a great day uh for all party animals fans and yeah, I think we’re going to call this the party breakdown podcast from here on out. Yeah. So, we were just at the first ever tour championship. We were there as media. Got to interview some players which will be getting out in the next little bit and we were able to then uh be at the game for the first ever tour championship. Savannah was amazing. I mean, Grayson Stadium was so small. Super cool to watch. Yeah, it was a really uh that’s what I love about uh the Banana Ball games that we’ve been to. Uh the the smaller this the stadium, the smaller the venue, kind of the the better feel I feel like. And Grayson’s a really small stadium. It’s a historic stadium. Savannah is an amazing uh place. Like it’s a beautiful town. Uh and now uh you know, we got to go to the historic stadium, but even though it’s historic, it’s really small. And so we got to have a cool tour of everything. Uh and it was awesome. Yeah. So let us know in in the comments as we’re going through this live stream. We’ll we’ll bring some up of what your favorite moment was of this weekend. Had a ton of fun there. Um, should we talk about the the top moment of the weekend right here? Uh, yeah. I I think so. I think everyone’s been uh uh been wanting to to talk about this, so let’s let’s do it. Something crazy happened in the eighth inning of the championship game. Uh, and we kind of want to talk about it. No one was uh Yeah. Yeah. So, let me pull this up here and we will share our screen. technical difficulties as we get this up. Cannot wait to see this. I love technical difficulties personally. Yeah, they’re the best. Yeah. Max. Oh no. What a play by that kid. Oh, it’s Brandon. Go away. The Banana Ball Breakdown podcast. That’s why you bring your club to the Banana Ball game. AUF grabs him. Love Bo’s call there. One of the preeminent podcasters in Banana Land, catches the second foul out to the fans in Banana Ball postseason history. And it’s a perfect inning for Pods. Bo’s call is just amazing. Yeah. When he Yeah. when he he recognizes that it’s Brandon. Just that great catch by Oh, it’s Brandon. It’s just perfect. Uh it’s Yeah, it it was such an incredible moment. Uh I know we’re getting some awesome chats in here. You guys were going crazy as well. Um yeah, I I want to I want to tell it from my perspective. Okay. Uh, so Brandon is talking all day about how he’s going to catch a foul ball, and I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. We’ll see. We’ll see.” We’re standing in uh, you know, the place that most of the foul balls are uh, standing room only there and Grayson Grayson probably the the best place to catch it. And throughout the whole game, he’s talking about how he’s he’s going to catch a foul ball. And I’m not really paying attention uh at this point because I was not not that I wasn’t paying attention to the game. Excuse me. I was talking to to Garrett Lambert uh uh Rhinestone. Rhinestone. Yeah. Blue blue vest, blue cowboy hat. He’s the MC for the Texas Tailgator Games. Yeah. So, we were we were chatting with him. So, I’m talking to him and I just hear the crack of the bat and by the time it happened so fast that by the time I turned my head, Brand the ball is already in Brandon’s hands and I’m like in his in his mitt. I’m like, what just happened? And everyone’s going crazy. Brandon is sprinting to the field and I’m like trying to chase him. But Brandon had told me, he was like, “If I catch a foul ball, I’m you need to watch my bag.” So that’s why I didn’t run up there and no one could see me on the the broadcast was because I was in charge of Brandon’s bag, so no one stole anything. So, which I very much appreciate. Yeah. Uh but yeah, so that was absolutely shocking. I I was I was hoping for it, but the fact that it happened is still crazy to me. Um, I’m gonna show this again because I want you guys to see where where Sammy is because you can find him. He’s just hiding in in the back because he’s in his his blackout hoodie. So, we’ll play it again and then you guys can see that there. So, you see him right here behind me. I’m jumping. There’s Sammy. There he is. Okay. And then there’s me. Yeah. Yeah. Sammy was right there by me the whole time. Pumped it up. Excited to see it. So, we just had a really good time there. It was phenomenal. And um yeah, I I didn’t care which team it was for like Sam was saying. So, I I’m going to tell a background story. I’m standing there in that picnic area. So, there’s picnic tables to our left. There’s the uh like the lawn chairs to the right. There’s a little there’s like a triangle area that’s probably like five five to 10 feet in front of us that no one was standing in. So, I was like, “Cool, I can bolt forward and catch it if it’s in front of me.” And then behind us, we were standing on the the edge of the sidewalk. So, there’s this like three-foot path that goes for probably 20 or 50 feet back that way. That’s where the porta potty truck parked. And if you saw our live stream pregame, uh that’s Yeah, that’s the path there. Yeah. So, it was it was back that way. And so, literally between each pitch, I’m waiting for the pitcher. Right before he pitches, I look over my shoulder to see, okay, there’s a little kid walking. Don’t run back there if the foul balls hit. Okay, they’re gone. Okay, this this pitch I can go if I need to. Oh, there. Okay, there’s there’s a grandma walking. Okay, don’t go back there. You can only stay here. So, I was going back and forth between that every pitch and I was I was getting a little frustrated by the eighth inning because there were zero foul balls in our area. Z like not not by the picnic, not by the other chairs. There were none remotely in our area. And that’s where in in the interview I I called out, but I was I was talking to Garrett Lambert Rhinestone as he came up and I was like, I don’t understand it. There haven’t been a single foul ball. And I’m literally mid-sentence with him. And like Sammy said, crack of the bat, turned my head, it’s coming. And immediate panic in my head because I’m thinking, I have been prepping for this. I have posted everywhere. I’ve wanted this. If I drop this ball right now, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life. And so I’m just like hoping, hoping, hoping. And this is all happening within like one second. And I reach up and there’s people right in front of me with their hands and it literally like centimeters over their fingers catch it. And yeah, I was just like, I’ve got to get like Zach Phillips like I got to get the attention of the broadcast. So I’m like excited just jumping up and then it all went from there. It was absolutely crazy. It was banana ball miracle. Uh yeah, it was crazy. I I cannot believe that happened. I Brandon was talking about it constantly and I was just like, “Yeah, it might happen. I I don’t I don’t know.” And I didn’t even I had a glove, but I put it away because I was like, “I’m going to catch it bare-handed if it comes to me.” Uh, but Brandon caught it. He deserved it. He was uh he was prepared. I probably would have dropped that, so I’m happy for him. No worries. U Yeah. I know. It was funny because Sammy had had his the glove and he like has it in his arm, like the crook of his arm right here while he’s holding his soda and after a couple innings I was like, “Sammy, do you want me just to put it back in the bag?” But yeah, we were operating on like two and a half hours of sleep on the plane ride. Um, so if if you watched the live stream, apologies for the sleepdeprived us that were not making a lot of sense on there. But yeah, we’re going to go into um kind of some of the season as a whole. We’re going to get to some of the comments in a second uh talking about all of that. We really appreciate your guys’ support here. Um, but yeah, I I want to show one last thing before we uh before we go more into the rest of the game and celebrate with the party animals. Um, so I want to show this right here. Okay, I need to defend myself really quick. Same as all. That was after the game. Okay, the game was over when I started wa watching that. Was I checking the score during the game? I was, but I didn’t start watching the game until after. And then I started tweeting. Okay. Just want just wanting to defend myself there. Yeah. And we’ll get to some of the other ones in a second, but I also have to do this one. So, Eli Brandon probably has the ball framed in his house. It’s not framed yet, but it will be. We’re going to put it up somewhere. So, I’ll go here. It’s right here. Yeah, he he wanted to he wanted to get it uh signed uh after the game, but we didn’t end up finding Dalton Pon afterwards. So, uh, yeah. So, uh, I want to show this on Instagram really quick, what we published before the game. And again, I was just kind of, hey, I’ll throw it out there. Worst case scenario, it’s a, hey, here’s banana ball. If you catch foul ball, it’s an out. And kind of just do some of that. So, uh, and make this beforehand. We’re here at Grayson Stadium and my number one goal tonight is to catch a fan cop foul ball. Since the bananas were eliminated, I can just try to catch any foul ball. So, we try to get it out there. But it’s the tour championship tonight between the party animals and the firefighters. We’ll see who wins. My favorite part here is banana ball later riding you called it just so so cool that they were able to do that. Um but yeah, we we have so many other stories with the players with the cast. Everyone was so kind and they kept coming up to us and it was it was so much fun. So we’ve got a lot to a lot to talk about. But should should we just start at the beginning of our trip or what? Or should we? I think we should address the elephant in the room that that everyone uh What? What elephant? This is This is exactly the same as a normal podcast. We’re wearing the same things we always wear. We’re acting in the same way we always do. Eli’s comment was Man, you guys are There’s a lot of comments in here. Sam’s trying to go back and and we can’t even get back because there’s so many there. Here we go. Eli heel turn of the century. I don’t Yeah, I guess party animals are are the heel to the bananas. So, uh yeah, great heel turn. I will say we were trying to Yeah, the seeing those chat comments come in when we started was exactly what we were hoping for. Uh yes, I looks good in in pink and and green and black, you know? It it looks good. Yeah, it was it was so much fun hanging out with those guys on the field and and yeah, it was such a such a fun moment. So, I’m still I still don’t know exactly where my fandom will lie after this, but I definitely I know you’re a bananas fan. You can’t hop on the bandwagon, but just we us real Party Animals fans and there’s plenty of us here a lot in the chat. We deserve that championship. You can’t just hop on and and Okay, I guess you actually played a role in the championship. No one else can say that. But uh yeah, we you you’re a bananas fan. Come on. Yes, I think that there will be a I think I will always be a main bananas fan, but I definitely I like the party animals a lot more after that after that moment and after talking to the party animals, that was so cool. Uh we’ll get into some of their comments, but just even before the game, Dalton Pon, Chase Auff, Sean Fluke, a bunch of the guys came up and it was it was really cool to see. Um awesome. Brazo Motorsports. Love how you threw the hat off. Yeah, that was my that was my favorite moment. So, I get I get in there. I get on the field and I I’m in the middle of the circle. There’s party animals all around me and you can see on the broadcast Garrett Deleno is like reaching trying to grab my hat and he grabs it and chucks it like get that Savannah bananas crap out of here. It was so so funny. So, by the time it comes around to my interview, I don’t have a hat on because Garrett chucked it and then as soon as the the interview ends, they like ran up to me and handed back the hat and it was it was pretty funny. Yeah, it was so funny. Uh our cuz we’re brothersin-law. I don’t know if people know that. Uh so we’re in the same family chat. Our our wives are sisters. So that’s how we’re brothersin-law. Um and they they were like, “Did Brandon get his hat back?” Like concerned that uh um yeah, it it was funny. Um yeah. So I think we’ll just go over some comments for a little bit. Um Carmen, wait. You’re wearing Party Animals gear. I love it. Um, Renee, just be a fan of the sport. I cheer for all the teams. That’s that’s kind of where I think I’m going to fall after this where I will probably be Maine main bananas overall, but just excited for everyone. That was it was also fun. I mean, that’s kind of where I landed. I was super sad that the bananas didn’t make it, but then it was like I’m excited that the firefighters have a chance to get there. So, overall, I think that’s where we are. Um, but Sammy’s main team will always be the party animals, and I I think my main team will always be the bananas. for this time. I will celebrate with the party animals because I helped the game and I I still can’t believe that that even happened. So, if you ever go to a banana ball game, bring your glove. There there is no moment in sports as a fan like that if you’re able to do it. So, I would definitely recommend bringing it. It’s worth the chance to bring it, especially if you’re in a smaller stadium. out. Seriously, uh it made it it that moment made it so that we could stay awake until uh until we got to the airport. Uh we were so tired, but then that just the rush of adrenaline there was just awesome. Uh yeah, there’s no literally there is not another sport where you can have an impact on the game like that. um like you there’s ways to impact a game negatively as a fan if you like throw stuff on the field or something and your team gets a penalty or something like that. Uh yeah, but like and recording an actual out. Uh yeah, just just hilarious. So great stuff. Yeah. So couple other questions. So Liz says, “Is this Brandon’s jersey or is he buying from Sammy?” Actually, this is uh these two jerseys. It’s from my my sister and my brother-in-law. So, they are also uh diehard Party Animals fans. They actually went for a couple years before I even knew about Banana Ball and then I found out about that and they’re like, oh yeah, we’ve already been to a couple games and I’m like, why didn’t you tell me? But yeah, they let me borrow it tonight uh on a whim because I was like, you know, I need to I need to celebrate with the party animals fans tonight. Um but yeah, so there’s a lot of a lot of cool comments in here talking about uh next year. So Mego says he might see firefighters tailgators in Syracuse, New York. That would be awesome. I hope you can make it there. Uh Kenyon, I need to see Clowns versus Coconuts in Duval. Uh any game I want to see. For me, my my number one game next year is I got to go to a Coconuts game. That’s that that that team looks so cool. The jerseys look fantastic. Coach Crocco and Shane Victor, like that’s going to be so cool to see. So that’s kind of my number one. I don’t know about you for next year. I’m excited about the Clowns. Uh that was so so cool to bring a historic team back like that. Uh if I could go to any game next season, uh we’re going to try to go to some, but if I had my pick, I don’t think I’m going to make it out there because just logistic stuff, but I would love to see the the clowns headline at uh Rickwood Field in in Birmingham, Alabama. Just a historic team playing in a historic ballpark. Uh I that’s going to be such a cool moment. So, that’s my the thing that I’m the most excited about that and the party animals playing at Boyisee State’s stadium uh football stadium, the blue turf. That’s awesome, too. So, uh yeah, there’s going to be a lot of awesome stuff, but let’s uh let’s talk about our our uh trip and the championship game and the playoffs in general and all that stuff. You want to start us off on the beginning from this trip? Let’s uh start at the airport where all things start. Yeah, we got to the airport in Phoenix, uh, the Phoenix airport at around 8 o’clock. Well, no, around 9:00 on, uh, Friday night. Our flight left at 11:00 p.m. and we tried our best to sleep on the flight. It did not work. It Yeah, it was rough. It was so cold on the flight. I was trying to use my sweatshirt as a pillow and I couldn’t because I had to wear it because it was so cold. Uh yeah, no not really any sleep and then we landed in Miami, had a layover there and then went to landed in Savannah and I slept a little bit better on the second flight. Uh but yeah, so we get there and are exhausted because we did not sleep at all that night. And so that was about 8:00 Savannah time, which is 5:00 in the morning Arizona time. So we for our internal body clocks 11:00 to 5:00. And now we’re we’re awake. We got to get ready to go. So, we land and we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do and we it’s like 8:00 there and we can’t get into the ballpark until 1:00 to start interviewing the players. So, we’re like, we got to kill some time and it’s raining outside, so we don’t want to. Our initial plan was to maybe just go to the stadium, see if there’s any food around there, but like just hang out there, maybe film some stuff. It was pouring rain, so uh Sammy had a genius idea that I will let him share. We just loitered at a Chick-fil-A for about three hours. loitered is a strong word. We we paid We actually ate two meals there because we were there for so long. We got uh we we bought breakfast and then hung out there. I was trying we were we were getting stuff ready uh prepped for the day and I think I wrote an article. Yeah, I got an article out we both wrote an article for Bananas on SI. I saw the the Giant Globe like the next door place to Chick-fil-A and so I ran over there, filmed a a reel for that which was pretty funny. But yeah, so we we actually ate the two meals we ate in the breakfast time and then it changed over to lunchtime. Um so it was pretty pretty fun to see. Are you laughing at Celtics fan? Uh oh, the the water comment or what? Yeah. Uh where’s that one? It’s up a little bit. Oh, here we go. Water. Really, Sammy? Yeah. I’ve had I’ve already had some soda today. I need to try to cut back, I think. I don’t know. This is crazy. We’re like switching switching spots here. I need to go grab a soda. I should be drinking a Mountain Dew because I’m so tired right now, but trying to do what’s best for my body, I think. Well, a couple quick comments here. Shoe 44, hoping to see the Coconuts twice. Scranton and Wilmington. I hope you can. That team looks really, really fun to watch. Uh, Mego, wow, it must be so hard with the different time zones. Yeah, it was it was pretty rough overall. And we’ll get into the rest of how it happened, but at the same time, it almost felt like we didn’t change time. Like it was it was so fast our bodies didn’t really get used to it. So, we were like, yeah, because we didn’t sleep, it always felt like it was specific time. I feel like or it kind of kind of felt like we there was time didn’t exist for two days. It felt like seriously felt like it was the same day. It was the same day, but also it felt like a week at the same time. It was so It was weird. Um, yeah, I want to call this one out because, uh, we actually had something cool here. So, Kariel Soul, I’m calling this now, Clark Gilmore is going to be the new all-star pitcher for the Coconuts. So, Clark Gilmore is is a is a pitcher. He is not in Banana Ball currently, but he’s been posting stuff recently that he wanted to be in Banana Ball. If you haven’t seen his videos, go check him out. He has like a really cool behind the back pitch where in his wind up he throws it behind the back for a perfect strike and then follows through like a normal pitch to try to throw people off. He actually had he told us there he had his try out uh on Sunday the day after the tour championship. So we got to talk to him. That was super cool. And I I agree. I hope he makes it next year. I don’t know if you guys noticed uh that he he did he was part of he did one of the promos of that. Him and his friend uh did the the um what’s it called? They’re running and the pool floaty floaty put the what what is that called? It’s the circle thing that you put does that tube? A tube inner tube. Yeah, that put it over them and they’re running around and they jumped in the uh in the pool at the end. So yeah, that was him. Uh but yeah, it I think he’s gonna be awesome, too. Great guy. Yeah. No, I’m I’m super excited for him. Um the Thomas, in my opinion, the best thing that could have happened to Banana Ball was the Savannah Bananas not being in the finale. The Bananas cannot carry the league. Yes. As much as I wish they were there as a Bananas fan, I it would have been a really fun game to watch Bananas Party Animals. It it it was the best thing. It was It was worse for current today’s viewership. Like the viewership was lower. I think the buzz around the community was lower, but the that the buzz that was there was party animals take it in the league. And so everyone’s thinking, well, isn’t that the don’t this Savannah Banana script every game? So, I 100% agree with you. This is the best thing for Banana Ball. And also, congratulations to the party animals. Like, they had an incredible season. They’ve had an incredible run ever since they started and they definitely deserve it. So, okay, Eli calling this now. Brandon and Sammy will pitch for the Bananas and Party Animals next year. And the other part is a rage bait for Sammy and Utah will beat BYU this Saturday. We’re gonna try to prevent any rants until the end of the live stream. Okay, we got banana ball to talk about right now. Uh that would be crazy if we pitched. it would not go well uh at all. I I don’t I don’t think I I think the absolute most we could do is a mediocre first pitch because some of the celebrities can’t get it over the plate. So, if we didn’t get over the plate, we’d be fine. But there’s there’s no way that we could pull off any sort of thing like this. The talent that they do is is incredible. We threw the ball back to a a player while they were doing batting practice. I can’t remember who it was, but uh we were on the sideline and interviewing some people and they were doing batting practice and a ball came over and I threw the ball back and right before I threw it in my head, I was like, “Don’t embarrass yourself. Just don’t just try to get this to him. Don’t” And it was it was a decent throw, but yeah, I would I would be so so nervous to throw out the first pitch because I would just embarrass myself. I I played lacrosse growing up. case. I didn’t use my arm. I used uh lacrosse stick for all throwing and catching. So, that’s that’s my excuse. Yeah, I I did play little league all the way up until uh right before junior high. Uh had a fun time with that. I I love I love baseball. Um not not very good, but yeah, doing doing a first pitch would be incredible, but yeah, I would I would most likely throw a ball, but we’ll see. Uh jumping into another one. We’re going to jump into some other comments, but for anyone who’s watching this right now who doesn’t know who we are, we are the Banana Breakdown podcast. We do weekly podcast episodes where during the season we were breaking down all the games and we had some interviews with players and cast of Banana Ball. And now that the season’s over, we’re going to be doing an interview every single week with an occasional us breaking down some of the stuff that’s going on. Um, we do those as live streams here on this channel, so be sure to be subscribed. Um, but you can also listen on Spotify or Apple Podcast where you look for your normal podcast. Um, but we’re so excited to have you here. We love Banana Ball and get to talk about it on a weekly basis with you guys and we really appreciate all of you being in the chat. It’s so fun in these live streams to get to talk to each and every one of you. So, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, live streams are probably my favorite thing about this. Uh, it yeah, it just feels like we get to know people because of the comments and everything. So, that’s a lot of fun. Uh, and sometimes I feel like you guys remember things that I said more than I do cuz especially right now how tired I am. I don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth. So that live streams it’s not edited and you just get to hear whatever whatever the heck I say. So uh, so jumping into some more comments. Ashley, the party animals beat up on the bananas all season before they played the Texas Tailgator the rest of the season. So, they were number one in my heart regardless of this flawed standings. Um, I I definitely agree. It would it would it’d be hard to tell where the rest of the season would have been if they had done the firefighters playing the Party Animals more and some of those, but most likely the Party Animals would have taken it on top. Um, so at least the Bananas were number one seed right before they were taking got kicked out of the playoffs. So, at least I have that as a Bananas fan. Yeah, I guess. Um, Renee to Thomas as a three-year-old banana fan and a threeyear banana three year long. She’s three years old. I don’t know why I said old. That just I totally read that wrong. I as a three I I knew it was as a three-year banana fan. I just said old at the end of I don’t know why. Uh, as being a fan of Banana Ball for three years and Kub for two years, it’s been a treat to witness your Banana Ball fan journey. Thank you so much. It’s been uh amazing to be able to share it with all of you and we’re just getting started. This is our first full season watching Banana Ball and so we’re really excited for the offseason to see where it all goes. Um Eli with an inside uh joke for those not aware and y’all are secret agents. Maybe not the firefighters but with another team that I’m figuring out. Yeah. So you you guys thought it was the firefighters all year long, but I caught a foul ball against the firefighters. So I mean I don’t know. or or was it Brandon going into deep cover because our cover was starting to be blown so we had to do something drastic. All I will say is that now with the four teams, the only one I haven’t worn is a firefighters jersey. So, is that true? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it is true. No, that this this is literally day one of wearing a party animals jersey. So, I want the record to show that if the bananas would have won the championship, I would not be wearing a banana shirt right now. What if you caught a foul ball to help the bananas win? No, I wouldn’t have done that and I uh I would not be wearing it. What would it take for you to wear yellow? Because I know Reese Select tweeted a while back like when he when you congratulated him on a home run and he’s like, “Yeah, I got to hit a couple couple good ones and then maybe we’ll get you over to yellow.” Is there anything that will tempt you over to the banana site even for one day? I’d have to think about that for a while. I don’t know. Okay, we’ll we’ll try to figure something out, guys. We’ll we’ll see. Um, Karia Soul Rack mentioned in his vlog the Bananas will probably split into different teams next year. Crushing it would give more opportunities to see our phase. Yeah, I watched his I watched his vlog this morning and and he does mention that he like straight up said like most likely this is our last time playing together. Uh, we’ll see where things go. So, as of right now, the they have not announced anything about the team splitting up or any of that. So, the coach Rexath is the best that we’ve got at the moment. We’ve heard some rumors, but nothing that we know for sure. Like, and what we’ve heard, it’s funny. We’ve we’ve talked to a lot of players and they it Jesse keeps stuff really close to the Yeah. Like people don’t know about this stuff. So, like we’ve talked to a lot of players about like what they think’s going to happen next year and uh they just they don’t really totally know. And uh I don’t remember who I asked about the the equalizer point. Uh oh yeah, I need to watch those videos because we we talked about it, but he forgive me. One of the party animals that he was it I think it may have been Drew Gillespie. It was it was Drew. Yeah, I think uh I don’t remember though, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but someone that I that I was talking to, uh I was like, “When did you find out about the equalizer point and like how did that change in preparation?” And he was like, “We found out like a day or two before.” Like I was expecting like them to have known that, okay, in the playoffs we’re going to introduce this rule and so like just, you know, just so you’re aware. He was like, “We found out like a few days like not even a few days like it was like two days max I think is Yeah. So just people just don’t know like all that stuff. And so there’s we’ve heard some rumors and stuff but I think it’s all speculation. Yeah. And no one really knows what’s going on and they’re just everyone just kind of finds out at the same time. Yeah. So, all we all we know for sure right now is is what coach Rex said, whatever whatever we’re going to take from that. And then the other thing is what we’ve seen in the past. So, um Ashley says, uh older players move to newer teams to help the rookies. It’s nothing new. Uh yeah, I’m I’m actually excited for that because we like that’s happened every year with the new teams, but we’ve never experienced that as fans. So, it’ll be fun to kind of see some of that. But you’ve got like um Daltton Cornet and Joe Lidle coming from the party animals over to the firefighters. Um you had Christian Dear and Noah Bridges coming from the bananas to the firefighters. And then from the Texas tailgator, you had uh Indie Stanley who was a visitor and then Party Animal over to the Tailgator. Hussein Jordan Hussein from the Party Animals to the Tailgator. Was that it? that might have been it because they had a lot of the tailgators had a lot of really good talent coming out of the gate. Um so that was that was pretty cool to see. So yeah, it’ll be it’ll be interesting to see what happens with that. Um just from a pure like naming convention, this is this is pure banana breakdown speculation. We haven’t heard anything. Um, I would love to see Ashby Vining from The Visitors and um, Andy Archer from the Bananas on the Coconuts because Andy Archer played baseball in Hawaii. So, I think that would be perfect. As much as I would like him to stay on the Bananas, I think he could be a good leader for them. And then Ashby Vining from the Visitors, like in his visitors thing, he was like taking pictures with the surfboard and all that stuff. So, like I think they would be perfect and it’s going to be fun to kind of speculate some of that over the next little bit. But, we’ll see. We’ll see where all that goes. Liz, I can’t wait for some downtime where you can watch the historic ninegame win streak to end the 2023 season. Yeah, thank you, Liz. So, that was awesome. I I would love to watch all of that. The only part that I saw is I watched Banana Land season 2. So, I saw like the highlight reel, but that was when I didn’t know like anything about Banana Balls. So, I’m going to have to go back and watch that. And maybe we should watch all the nine games. That’d be fun. Yeah. Let should we do like a reaction video? I don’t know. People like that stuff. I I don’t know what people watch on YouTube these days. Can you imagine a nine a nine? So that’d be like 18 18 hour live stream. I don’t know if it needs to I don’t know how people do reaction videos. Okay. Let us let us know in the comments if you think that that would be funny to watch. Oh yeah. Liz says yes. Okay. Okay. We we don’t know for sure if we can pull it off, but we’ll we’ll look into it because that would be that would be pretty cool. Um or at least a breakdown. Yeah. Yeah, that probably makes because because that’s the one that sounds like it was the the most historic thing of the time because 2023 Hardy Animals took it and then seemed like 2024 it didn’t end as much of a cliffhanger um from what I’ve heard and I think the bananas took it overall potentially. Um but um are you going to react to Eli? I’m not a I’m not a betting man. I Oh goodness. that would there in order for me to accept that you’re going to have to do something and I don’t know what what it is like if BYU wins. So that’s I I can’t just I can’t just accept that blindly. Uh I’m terrified for that game, guys. Okay. I we don’t need it’s not BYU football breakdown right now but and literally no one cares about it. We have a video we have a video we need to show of Sammy watching it in the airport. It was pretty hilarious. Um Shoe 44. Yes, thank you. Matt Wolf to the firefighters. He was on the bananas. Went to the firefighters. Appreciate that. Um and then um Matt Wolf’s been on the firefighters. Do you mean the clown? Yeah, he was on the firefighters last year and then this year. And yeah, uh Shu 44, are you saying that you think he should go to the clowns? There’s an interesting case there because it was talked about in Jesse Cole’s book that Matt Wolf was with him when they went to one of their games and they were outside of the Negro League Museum and they got a tour and he he talks about in there how Matt Wolf like realized that this was like a like a really cool thing with Banana Ball of like okay I’m actually doing something that like has meaning and purpose because he saw what the Negro League team had done in the past. So, I could totally see him joining the clowns next year. But, he’s also an active duty firefighter. So, it’s like if I had to choose between the two, I would guess he’s staying on the firefighters, but I I could see it happening. He would be a perfect fit for either of those. Um, let’s see. I think there was a couple other comments. We missed a ton of comments. You guys are the best. Yes, thank you so much. Sorry if we don’t get Taj Taj Porter, thank you. Um, also, uh, mom of 777, congratulations to to Garrett Deleno winning MVP of the playoffs. That was incredible to watch. And also, he stole my hat, which was pretty funny. So, um, but yeah, it’s going to be it’s going to be so fun watching the the postseason. So, we we will be breaking it all down for you guys. And if there’s ever anything that you see news-wise or anything, like, feel free to throw us a DM on Instagram. We’re happy to happy to talk about it and then we can try to bring up as much uh live as we can on these. Um but yes, thank you guys so much. It’s been an incredible year that we couldn’t have done without you. Yeah, definitely. Um yeah, so many comments. You guys are the best. Uh let’s see. Should we talk about Sorry. Good. We got all the way up to Chick-fil-A and then arriving at Grace. I think any I don’t think people want to talk about the game. I think they want to hear what we had at Chick-fil-A, right? I I think that that’s what they’re here for. This is the Chick-fil-A breakdown of all things. So, we got Okay, we got to the stadium at around noon. Uh, we filmed some stuff that was the legend, what ended up being a legendary reel that was filmed where I threw uh it was great videographer, a great videography by me and a great and a great throw by me. I threw the ball to Brandon. One take. One take. One take. It was It was amazing. Yeah. Uh, and so it proved to be a prophetic Instagram reel where Brandon said he was gonna catch a foul ball. We filmed that. Uh, got into the stadium around one. We just, we got to give a huge shout out. I don’t know if he’s watching right now. Uh, to Brendan Norton. Uh, he So, we met him in Frisco. Uh, he is a student at uh, uh, in Savannah the at SCAD. I forget what that stands for. Savannah College of Art and Design, I think. Um, and he uh so we met him in Frisco. He reached out to us um because he was going to be at that game and uh he is doing his big school project this year is uh about the Tailgator debut season and he had this really long interview with Sunshine Looters. he was kind of like the main main character of his documentary that he was making. Um, and so we met him in Frisco. That’s why he was there. He was filming some content and uh he we asked him uh to be basically our our cameraman uh for this uh for this trip. And since he lived in Savannah was perfect. So, he met us at the um at the stadium and we got we got to go in with him and he kind of just followed us around with uh the camera and he helped us, you know, film the interviews and everything and he’s such a great guy. Uh I just want to give him a huge shout out and you guys should all follow him too because he we’re going to collaborate with uh with him with uh different videos that he made and everything on Instagram. So, you’ll see some of his his stuff, but he’s going to make like I’m just I’m just sure that his uh documentary is going to be great uh about the tailgator. So, I just want to give him a huge shout out. I can’t we really can’t thank him enough for that. He took a huge amount of time out of his Saturday to help us with that. So, yeah. So, you’re going to see a lot of the videos that that he took here soon. And it was really nice because one of our biggest one of the biggest things we felt we missed in Texas when we went to that game was we were filming these interviews with the players, but the players would come up to us and we would have these great conversations and then we would put turn the camera on, hand them a microphone, and then it like for Sammy and I, we kind of like froze up a little bit as like, okay, this is an official interview now. And then like the conversation was a lot more stiff than it was before. And so Brendan was there and we’re having these natural conversations and he’s just capturing it all. So thank you so much Brendan for being there. We can’t wait for you guys to see all of those videos that are going to come out on this channel. So be sure to subscribe to see those. Um for those wanting to follow Brendan and his work on Instagram, it’s BN04. Um so let me throw that in here. Um and it’s it’s super exciting. So his documentary, he’s going to put it out there. Um he’s he’s going to do some incredible things in in banana ball and in the sports world for sure. Um but Brendan, thank you so much. Can’t can’t say enough about that. Um so Brendan was able to be there the up until a couple hours before the game. So we have some some awesome footage there in that. Um Jesse Cole came up and talked to us which was really really cool. Um thanking us for what we did and and just being a just a genuine nice guy with the conversation and then he brought Jared Orin the president over and it was it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And then while that was happening, Chief pooped on the turf. The the reaction the firefighter dog. Um that was very funny. Um he just Yeah, he’s a dog. So when you go, you got to go. So uh yes, we had that one. And then one of my favorites, like there were so many good ones, but one of my favorites was pretty early on while we were there, uh Dalton Ponz, the pitcher who we actually helped out, which is pretty cool. Chase Auff and Sean Fluke from the Party Animals came up and and were talking to us and it was actually pretty funny. They were they were kind of harassing Sammy a little bit which was kind of hilarious. Well, yeah. Well, I was wearing the firefighter stuff and that in the reaction the reaction video that got way more views than I was expecting. Um and uh so they were saying like why was I wearing that? And yeah, and I I had to reassure them that I was rooting for for them tonight. I just just wanted the bananas to lose. Okay, I’m I’m a hater like that. But yeah, it was just a really fun conversation with them and and same thing with a couple of the other players. It was it was such a good time and and again, we were so grateful that Brendan uh was able to capture some of that. We’re hoping the the audio will be good because um there was a lot of music playing like they always do in all of the the practices and rehearsals. So um we’ll see how some of that turns out. But just shout out to all the all the the players that came up and talked to us. It was so much fun getting to interact with you guys and and we hope that we can we were able to capture some of that to to show you guys some of some of what that experience is like because they’re they’re just such good guys. Yeah. And uh it was yeah it was really awesome. Um great great experience and we got a lot of interviews so we’ll throw those up there too um eventually when we get we’re finally going to have some time to breathe here so we should be able to get some stuff up. Um also also quick shout out to uh McKay and I think it was Natalie on the on the Banana Ball team who were helping us with the interviews, grabbing players to to bring them to us. interviews. So, thank you to them for your help and thank you Sam Bowman for helping get us the media passes. Absolutely incredible. And and that was also one of the fun parts of the trip was just interacting with the background cast and the workers. Um it was uh Chad, I think it’s Chad Reese who’s in charge of the broadcast just came up to us and Chad, if you’re watching this, uh yeah, comment. It’s but he said he was a longtime viewer of the podcast and he actually took us on a tour of Grayson Stadium which was awesome and again kudos to Brendan for being there. We were able to capture the tour the the tour that they took us on and it included going up to the press box with D with Bo and Josh. And I will say that was one of the most sketchy things of my life going to climb up there. And it’s just like it’s it’s a freestanding but I it it kind of the engineering kind of freaks me out a little bit like walking up there. Yeah. You got to climb these steep stairs and then it’s just like a bridge almost over the stands and go into the press box. Uh but that was awesome. Got to chat with Bo and Josh there uh in the in the press box. Um it’s a small a really small one. Uh but it’s a perfect view. Like it you’re literally right up there. Um yeah, Liz, I’m so jealous you guys got to go to the press box. That’s hallowed crowd. Yeah, seriously. It was crazy. like we were able to see the the like the poster board behind them with all the stuff that’s in every every stream and it Yeah, it was it was absolutely crazy. Yeah. Perfect view of the stadium. You’re right above home plate. You can see everything and it’s it’s awesome. Uh yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s super crazy. Um and there’s a couple uh comments in here. Uh thank you guys again for that. Uh Ari, haha, you’re both party animals tonight. Yes. Shouting out the party animals. Uh great great game that they had. and Marie. Hey party people. Hey, glad to have you here. Um, and then uh the Thomas, have you guys had Vincent Chapman on yet? Most entertaining up. So, yeah. So, he we haven’t had him on for a full interview yet, but we actually were filming a preview live from Grayson Stadium and he actually hopped on. So, Oh, there. Thank you. Yeah. So, he hopped on for like two to three minutes. Uh we were just doing a quick one because we were on uh such such low sleep and the the porta potty truck came and stuck up the whole place so we had to end it and move. Um but he was he was super nice. Came over there and yeah, we’re hoping to have him on for for a full breakdown sometime. But yeah, that’s going to be the fun part of this off season is we’re just going to try to get as many interviews as possible uh each week and just get as many players as we can and cast members and all all that stuff and uh see what happens there. But that’s that’s going to be a lot of fun. So yeah, so follow us on Instagram, Banana Breakdown Podcast. That’s the best place to see the schedule. We’re still working out when we’re going to do those, but as of right now, our initial thought is to try to do them as live streams if possible so that we can we can hang out with all of you. Uh be able to to chat with you in the comments. And the next one, we’re we’re trying to do one next Wednesday. So, we’re going to we’re going to shoot for that at the start. Uh do some Wednesdays at 8:30 Eastern time and try to get some fun guests on the podcast. So, we’ll we’ll keep breaking it down throughout the off seasonason and then hopefully at some point we’ll just do an episode with just Sammy and I where we’ll kind of recap the year as a whole, our first year of being fans. Probably another one to look forward into 2026. As well as, you know, Jesse, if there’s something some crazy news he’s going to drop in the off season, we’ll be on it and we’ll we’ll make sure to to talk about it with you guys. So, we’re really excited for that. At some point, the rosters will come out and we’ll probably have an episode of just breaking down the rosters and likewise. And then we should probably have one, just thinking out loud here. Well, you know, all of you guys get to see the behind the scenes in this meeting right now. Um, probably have one of like previewing the season and like what our uh guess for the standings and records and all that stuff. That’s probably something people would watch. I don’t know. You guys, you guys tell us. I I don’t know. Yeah. So, it’s it’s going to be super fun. I I can’t wait. As Sammy said, we’re excited to have a little bit of like the off season where for us, we’ll be able to still do these weekly things, but there’s not as much prep with watching the game and preparing videos for the live stream. So, we’re excited for the offseason, but man, that selection show made me so excited for next year. It’s going to be a really fun time next year breaking down those games. Yeah, just looking at that schedule with all those places and all the teams and everything, it’s just going to be an awesome awesome season. Really excited. Yeah, for sure. Those they’re playing in a bunch of cool places and the two new teams are absolutely blowing people away. We actually saw a couple people in Coconuts jerseys at the stadium, which was pretty funny. And um also shout out to Coach Crocco, uh who’s going to be the co he was the coach for the visitors this year, and he’s going to be the Coconut’s coach. He was behind us probably about 30 feet away from us signing autographs for probably an hour to an hour and a half of the game in the same spot. And just that is what makes Banana Ball special is they get these fans first individuals where it’s it’s the championship. He he wants to be watching the game, but he’s being there with the fans, fan after fan after fan, signing autographs, talking to them, and you know that he just created tons and tons of Coconuts fans who are going to be diehard fans and they’re going to be rooting for him next year. So, I just love what they’re doing there. And then also like the hooligans were around everywhere. Every every single cast member was there which was pretty fun to see them just walking around Grayson Stadium all at the same time. Yeah, there was a really funny part. I don’t know if you guys saw it on the stream where it was because this was the Party Animals home game, right? So the Party Animals cast was doing everything. Uh, but all of the cast was there and it was like maybe the seventh inning, sixth, sixth or seventh inning where the manas all of a sudden showed up wearing that was so good. Party animal stuff and then one of one of them was wearing a Dalmatian thing. So like well he one of them was wearing it was the cheese was wearing Dalmatian and Fluffman was wearing the calendar crew. Oh that’s right. They were together. Yeah. So, there were some man some manas that were doing uh uh yeah, firefighters casts and then some were party animals there. But yeah, it was it was just really funny. Yeah. Uh yeah, Liz, it was in the the sixth or the seventh inning, I think. Something like that. Um I don’t know what that is. What is What is I don’t fully understand it either, but especially Ty Jackson, that’s like all he does now. And so it’s pretty funny. What? someone someone explained what that actually means. But I just I’ve seen it everywhere and so it’s just pretty funny. I was actually So yes, again I don’t know what it means but it was funny because we were actually playing pickle ball the other night and like I was announcing the score and I was like okay 67 and I go to serve and the guy next to me just starts busting up laughing. So it’s pretty funny. Um okay I guess maybe we should bring up 67s means nothing means nothing. just a saying it means nothing. That really does not answer my question at all. I’m I am more confused. I I’ve heard about it and I’ve seen people I don’t know where it comes from. It just all of a sudden showed up and Oh, that would be awesome. Eli Yeah, Ty Jackson should um say it. Um yeah. So, sorry guys. Well, I just feel like I’m so out of touch so with some of this stuff. Well, the problem is that some of it comes and goes so fast, but this one feels like it’s going to be like a big one that’s going to stay for a long time. Actually, it started on TikTok and died out, then it came back over the summer. There is no meaning to it. Um, Selen said that LaMelo Ball said it during an interview or something and then it took off from there. So, Oh, okay. Okay. Well, we’ll get back into into I was gonna say let’s get back into banana ball, but Eli’s Eli’s trying to rage bait Sammy again with BYU stuff. So, um yeah. So, pretty pretty cool to see. I’m excited for next year. Someone in the in the tons of comments said that they’re hoping that the cash gets finalized before the cruise, which I think makes perfect sense because it it would allow them to whoever’s on whatever teams, whether it’s visitors coming in, whether it’s a couple players moving, like they’ll have on the new jerseys and can start to build the fandoms because the crew should be like really close to the beginning of the season. Um, so that’ be pretty cool. Um, and then yeah, there’s a there’s a couple really good ones here. Uh, Ann Marie, I would cry if they touch the Party Animals roster. They’re gonna need to I think that there’s a lot of people that feel that way, but at the same time, if they don’t, I think that the Party Animals will go on like a 10-year streak because these guys are phenomenal. But I I tend to agree. I The only the only reason why the Party Animals would not win next year is because they get messed their roster gets messed up. Yeah. I I Yeah, I we’ll see what happens with all of that. Um, sorry. I wanted to do one more up here. No, you’re good. Messing with stuff. No, you’re totally fine. Um, Ari said, “Did we ever find out what head versus prime time coach is?” Yeah. So, we don’t have the full details, but what we know is that the head coach, so, uh, Coach Croco for the Coconuts and Coach Fox for the Clowns is the main coach. They’re the ones making all the calls. And prime time coach Shane Victorino for the Coconuts and Ryan Howard for the Indianapolis Clowns. They all they said was they’re going to be the coach for the big games. So, that could be determined a lot of ways, but the guess at this point is at least for two to three games, they’ll probably be the main coach with Coach Crock and Coach Fox being the assistant coach still there. Um, but I don’t know. It could be it could be a few more than that. So, we’ll we’ll see and get more details, but that’s what we know at this time. Probably just like the most famous stadiums. Yeah. Um, and Marie, they should know it by the cruise because it’s only a few weeks before the start. Yes, I agree. Celtics fan. If they touch skull, I protest. Yes, I think that there there absolutely have to be a few players that do not move and Jake Skull is one of them. Like he he should be a party animal forever and should not be touched for sure. Um let’s see. Liz, I feel safe about keeping our party animal starters and a few pitchers, but other than that, who knows? Yeah, agreed. Garrett Deleno, he’s he like there’s no way with the 777 and just him being the MVP of the playoffs like I I would guess that he’s staying. Anyone anyone else that you feel confident on the party animals? Favor. Yes. Well, yeah, I agree. The start I feel like you got to keep the the starters of each of the teams and then just uh Yeah, they’re they’re just at this point they’re just so in ingrained in like they’re just perfect like the part Yes. They’re just perfect for the the party animals vibe and everything. So, you can’t I don’t know. We’ll see though. You’ve got you’ve got to fill out a roster. But there’s there’s a lot of people that are trying out and there’s a lot of like banana balls growing and so there’s a lot of players like it’s you’re going to there’s going to be a lot of players that try out and that are good that have been practicing specifically for banana ball uh that have decided that right after college they’re going to go play banana ball instead of trying to go into indie ball or minors or whatever. So uh there’s a lot to choose from. So maybe that makes a difference. Who knows how many new players are going to show up. So, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s hard. And it’s also I think party animals in particular is going to be one of the hardest ones to touch in my opinion. If you move someone from a firefighters or tailgators, their brand isn’t as ingrained yet. But like party animals like a lot of these like for the guys that like grew it from the start where they were just the opposing team. They didn’t have a lot of help from the media team because everything was just growing and then they really started to take off and then everything started growing from there. like they kept getting booed at the games because they were just the antagonist bananas and they just grew everything from from the get-go. So, I think that that for those core players like I really really hope that they can they can stay, but keep them. It’s just who who knows at this point. We’ll kind of just see. Um Ashley’s guess is that the OG party animals are going to stay. I I would I would sure hope so because I do think that they could move a few people around, but like especially after like winning the the championship, you kind of want to keep some of them there. Good question. Who will be the first player to win a championship on more than one team? Oh, that’s yeah, that’s an interesting question there, Russ. Because now all 25 of these people have have a championship. So, kind of kind of see from there. Um, all right. Well, where do we want to We should probably talk about the game itself. Let’s do it. Um, yeah, we already talked about the tour before and Yeah. So, then we just kind of hung out. What? Yeah. So, like quick recap of the playoffs. Uh, bananas go down game one. Then they win game two against the firefighters and then the the Dalton Cornet hits that crazy walk-off in showdowns. Cements the firefighters there. Party animals win in two games. They completely sweep the tailgator. Tailgators were close that game too. Game two went to show went to showdowns. Almost had it. Party animals move on. So now we are party animals and firefighters. And got to shout out the Tailgator for winning the first ever equalizer point in that second. Yes. Which was super cool. And again, that that one will probably go down in history as as a really really cool ending to the game where they were able to pull off those two runs in the eighth inning. Um but yeah, so pretty cool to see how all that happened. And Garrett Deleno and and Brett Helton both threw eight innings in the two playoff games to lead them to the the tour championship. And then Delano started again in this game, which we’ll talk more about, but led to him being the MVP of the playoffs. He was locked in. Uh yeah, it it was uh it was really it was just an incredible performance by him. His pitching was just outstanding. Uh yeah, you could you could see like so some of the stuff that wasn’t on camera like you could see him like we saw him like walking walking in on the side and just like he was he was dialed and locked in the whole time like ready to go. Um and yeah, just super cool to see the performance he was able to pull off in keeping the the party or keeping the firefighters to to no runs. They ended up getting the one one run, but then because the party animals were able to score a point or score a run, it ended up being no points, which was really really cool for them to see. But yeah, Garrett Deleno was locked in and he definitely deserves the MVP after that performance. Yeah, I was very very impressed. Uh yeah, very impressed with that. And then the firefighters, their pitching uh was a little uh not was a little rough. um they they couldn’t quite adjust to the the strike zone that was being called in that game. Uh and there were quite a few um a lot of ball four sprints um which led to the majority of the points. I think three of the fourings Yeah. three three innings that uh so three points that the party animal scored were ball four sprints that led to that run. Uh and then there was an error that led to the the fourth um in the the bottom of the eighth. So, uh just the party animals were just so dialed in and they came to to play and they and the the firefighters, they had an amazing run and their pitching was amazing against the Bananas. Uh but it just didn’t quite uh their pitches were just not not landing in this one. So, yeah. And it’s and it’s tough to say for sure where what it was on the the pitcher side or the umpire side. I mean, t talking about it here. Liz called it out. Um so when when Vince joined our pregame live stream, so he was talking about how he was going to be the third base umpire because he’s the dancing up. He dances behind during the pitches. And so they want to make sure that in the in the playoffs and the tour championship, it’s an umpire that is just dialed in and locked in on the strike zone. And Vince before the game said that he thinks that he has a better strike zone than the umpire. I think it was I think it was totally joking at that point, but it it was kind of Liz, you’re right. It ended up being kind of interesting because that that strike zone was a little uh a little iffy and the fire firefighters couldn’t quite adjust to to it. Uh none of the pitchers really could. So yeah, uh the Thomas I was very surprised to see he was not behind the plate. Yeah, they’ve been putting him at third base a lot and he’s been doing a bunch of his antics there, but I I think it makes sense in in a game like this where you want to make sure that like the balls and strikes called really really really matter and so I think it’s it’s a good thing to to have happen. Um but yeah, it’s it’s one of those things where this was another showing of momentum. Momentum is huge in Banana Ball. It’s one of those things that I think over the next couple years will dial in even more of like the home versus away and how that affects momentum where a home team gets a walk-off. They get this burst of excitement and energy but then they go straight out to the field where the away team can get five, six, seven runs in the same inning and then it allows them to have this like feeling of we are crushing it right now. We’re doing so good even though they only get the one point. So that’s where it like can also feel bad where you’re like we scored all these points. only get one, but the party animals seem to use that to their advantage when they’re playing these games. Um, but it seemed like a a case of that where the the firefighters pitchers got a little bit behind and from there then it just kind of snowballed into this momentum where the party animals were just able to take it. And I will say something I want to give kudos to is the Party Animals batters. Like one in particular, we saw Jake Skull when it was a three 0 count or a 3-1 count, he wasn’t even in his stance. He knew he he was like, I’m just going to let this go. If it’s a strike, it’s a strike. And I think it’s going to be a ball ball for sprint. And like it was really cool to see the party animals adjust to that where they were like, “Hey, the strike zone is not in the in the the favor of the pitchers right now. So, we’re just going to like like wait it out a little bit more.” And you could you could see that as a strategy on the party animal side because they were laying off a lot of pitches and it worked out well for them and they got a ton of ball force sprints. So, kudos to the the party animals. They weren’t chasing anything. Yeah. Yeah, Ari says they know how to they know how to play the games. Um Jake School is a crazy man when it comes to hit. The homers last weekend were crazy. Yeah, that’s that’s one of my my biggest downsides is that he he got the two home runs in the playoffs. Um and then he didn’t get really any opportunities here. I know I can’t remember all the at bats. It was such a such a rush and I was so focused on foul balls, I wasn’t paying attention to everything. Um but I do remember the one time that he was he was so locked in and got that ball for sprint which really helped him. Um which was pretty cool. Um, Drake said it best on the pod. Party animals is about the game first and the entertainment second. Something like that. Lol. Yeah, you could you could see for sure. And I think they’ve Sammy can weigh in on this a little bit more as the resident party animals fan here. But I think that they do a good job of balancing it. And they have the people like Jake Leios, Blake Benson, and some of the other players who are good baseball players as well, but they lean super heavy on the entertainment side that help kind of carry that balance for the team. And I think that’s that’s really cool to see. Uh yeah, definitely. Uh but I I I agree with Drake and with Ashley that uh the party animals, they they want to win. That’s their number one priority at all times is to win. And I love that about the team. I love that energy and that like we’re just we’re better than you. Like not in like a like obviously they have good relationships with everyone, but like you it to be an elite athlete like these guys are, you kind of have to have that mindset of just like I don’t care what happens. I know that I’m better. And that’s what you you feel like whenever you like Jake goal is is batting. When Drew Gillespie gets up there, he knows that he’s gonna take care of business and they just have they just have so much confidence and so yeah, it’s it’s cool. Um, yeah. Another another quick quick moment outside of the game. This was in the pregame. I just remembered it when you were talking about that is one of one of my other favorite moments was we were interviewing some players and out of nowhere Drew Gillespie just runs over and we had him on an interview when we were in Texas and he just like ran over, reached out his hand, grabbed the mic, and just stood in front of the camera. I didn’t even know he was there and all of a sudden he comes running at me and like gives me a a high five and a quick like hug, you know, one of those. and then grabs the mic and all of a sudden we were interviewing him. It was like what the heck? It was awesome. It was it was really funny. And so he just he just and that was like part of it where it’s like it it seemed like he wanted he wanted to come over for an interview but he also wanted to stay locked in. So it was like came over really fast did the interview and then he went back to preparing and it was like that is the perfect way to do all those things. And and same thing with uh with Drew later. We were watching as some of them were come the fans were coming in and Drew Gillespie had this really really cool interaction with a little kid that we were watching and just gets down on their level like being really really like focused on the kid and then he gets up and goes on the field and and goes ready to play. And I love how they’re able to switch from that of like I’m going to be fans first and I’m going to be focused on you for this couple minutes, this couple seconds, whatever how much time I have and then I’m going to get back on the field and I’m going to dial in. And so it’s really cool to see a ton of the players doing that. That’s one of my favorite things about the Inerson games is watching those interactions. Yeah, definitely. Uh are we going to do some more comments or get to go? If you got something, go for it. Uh I guess what what’s next chronologically is what we already uh discussed here is the bottom of the eighth. Dalton Pon comes to the mound. He has a great inning, gets two outs, and then uh Mason Maxwell’s at the at the plate. Foul tip goes right into Brandon’s glove. Absolutely crazy. And again, I mean, just going back into that, like literally like I maybe move forward a half step, like it was it was right to me. It was it was crazy. Yeah. Like and and yeah, it was just such a back to back to being there in that space. It was just such a fun place to be because not only can the foul balls come there, but even outside of that, I’m so glad we were there because the cast was coming by on and off. We were able to see a bunch of visitors, players, incognito there. Um, it just felt like just a cool moment for us. Like I obviously that the most important thing was the party animals winning the championship, right? But like for us who we started this thing just kind of on a whim, not knowing if it was going to do well or not. And we’ve put in a lot of work and it’s been an exhausting few months. Um, and for this to kind of feel like a the culmination of a of a season’s worth of work where and not just work of like making stuff, but of relationships that we’ve built. Um, and that has taken a lot of effort and and it’s taken us out of our comfort zone and like reaching out to people and uh, and kudos to the Banana Ball team for just being so kind and welcoming and excited about what we’re doing. Uh, which we weren’t expecting. Um, and it just felt like a culmination of that where like we were just talking to people all night. Like we we knew so many people and like people would just come up to us and just like, “Oh, let’s talk to Brett Loftess. Oh, let’s talk to uh, you know, just some visitors players that are incognito. Let’s talk to uh Garrett Lambert that’s walking around.” And uh, just a who kind of gave us that was a cool moment. We talked to to to Ananas who is the first person we interviewed. He was a he’s a cast member. So he’s the he reached out to us and was like, “Hey, if you if you ever want to have me on.” And so we had him as our first interview. We didn’t know that we’re going to do interviews that early on, but we just did. And it was cool to talk to him. And he like he saw our media passes and he’s like, “Hey, that’s that’s so cool.” and we just got to thank him for being, you know, because of him, we’re kind of in this position because he reached out to us and like it blew up so much faster than we were expecting. And so for then for all that to happen and then for Brandon to catch that ball and for Bo to recognize him right away because we were literally just with them a few hours before that, you know, talking to them and and then it’s just crazy to have Brandon wearing his shirt that had our thing on there. It’s just kind of just perfect. And for all of you guys that were watching it that like reached out to us was really cool too of like we we’re getting so many Instagram messages and like thank you so much just like thank you guys for for watching all the stuff that we’re we’re doing for caring about the sport enough to watch two guys talk about it like just it’s just been really really cool. So thank you. Yeah, we really really appreciate it. And yeah, that was that was so much fun just like looking at looking at the comments coming in, looking at the the messages and and really appreciate every single one of you for reaching out and and uh shoe 44 wish I had the talent or the time or grind that you guys have. First time listening to the podcast. Great work. Thank you so much for being here. Uh we appreciate that. And yeah, we’re we’re just getting started and we’re excited to have the off seasonason where players are more available and we’re able to do more of these interviews. And then next year we’re going to get right back on the game breakdowns and and it’s going to be really exciting because um for those who don’t know our our backstory, we went to opening night this year in in Mesa and Sloan Park and it was it was that night that we kind of decided, okay, let’s let’s try it. Let’s do this thing. And so like we started to prepare some stuff within a week or two. We had filmed episode one talking about our experience at opening night. We then waited until March because we our initial plan was to do monthly breakdowns. And so we filmed our February breakdown of all of the games. it came out and the banana ball team commented on on like the first couple videos and and a bunch of other people commented and so we’re like okay I think we let’s should we do this weekly so then we we jumped over to weekly then aunt one of the manas reached out and was like hey I’d love to have interviews and we’re like well we want to do that at some point I don’t know if we’re ready but like should we go for this and so then like shout out to him getting us our start um also like just a couple other things along the way Chase Akuff was the first player to follow us on on social media, followed us on Twitter within like before our podcast even came out. We had created the Banana Breakdown podcast social media. Yeah, I just started posting memes on there and yeah, stopped doing that. But yeah, just he followed us and we’re like, “Okay, I guess people think this is cool and we’re just going to keep going.” So Oh, that’s that is so cool. Um, Ann Marie, I have no reference point of Banana Ball without this podcast since I became a fan in May, but I personally feel like it elevates the experience. That is, thank you for sharing. That is so cool to to hear and to see. And and that’s what we hope. We’re hoping we’re just Banana Ball is an amazing thing and we’re hoping we’re we’re elevating it, that we’re adding something there. And also, uh, I don’t remember all of your names, but shout out to all the fans that came up to us in Grayson Stadium. That was like a top tier moment for us when out of the blue someone comes over and like you guys are the podcast guys, right? And like start a conversation, took a couple pictures, like top tier moment that it matters enough to you guys that you came up and talked to us and so uh shout out to everyone that came there. We really really appreciate the time and effort that you guys put into that. Yeah, seriously. Um we really appreciate all you guys. Um well, what else do we want to talk about? We’re we’re kind of running long here. Yeah. If there’s anything else that you guys want us to talk about from the playoffs, looking forward to next year, throw it in the chat. We’d be happy to to go for for a couple more minutes longer if there’s something. Um but yeah, we we are just so so incredibly grateful right now. Um for everyone here and for you guys, start crying. No, but it’s it’s it’s been a long season and and we appreciate it. And again, that being at Grayson Stadium, talking to everyone there was just like Sammy said, a culminating moment. And one of my favorite things was uh Bo’s call and then Josh’s call when Josh goes on and talks about uh he and Sammy have been doing this since the first game. And the fact they get the fan caught foul ball is like the perfect ending. So poetic like like I think that they just summed it up perfectly. And so that was that was really awesome. That’s what uh that’s what we we felt too. Um, Liz, uh, I believe you were the one that gave us the suggestion, but we didn’t end up buying anything. Uh, we just got the free food. We got we both ate two cheeseburgers. I drink a lot of Coke. Um, yeah. So, that’s that’s not nothing super exciting, but uh yeah. Yeah. when you don’t sleep forever, it’s like I don’t want to. I mean, the cheeseburger probably wasn’t the best choice either, but it’s like I don’t want to hurt my stomach too bad. Yeah. So, we just got some of the free food. So, for anybody that doesn’t know, Grayson Stadium has free food included with everybody that’s there. And so, yeah, it was pretty cool to to see that the way that they they did that and it was actually it was actually really good. So, we were able to to eat some of the free food and yeah, we were just kind of running really fast trying to trying to we just finished the interviews. We’re just like we just want to rest and sit down for a little bit. We tried to do the live. So uh we didn’t have a lot of time to do all that, but um it was super cool to see um all of that. And then um Celtics fan, we want to talk about the party plaza. Um so we we were able to go out there for a little bit and it was it was pretty cool seeing all the party animals players out there and then they kind of came back inside pretty fast and after looking at social media, I think we know why. They came out to the party plaza which was really cool. hung out with the fans, signed autographs, and then they went back into their locker room and did the the celebration stuff. So, pretty cool to to see all of that. Yeah, we actually weren’t in the Party Plaza for too long. The band was great. Uh, Party Down did a great job. Uh, but we were making some content in the We just wanted to sit down. Honestly, we had been standing for so long and so we were sitting in the in the stadium. And it was kind of cool, too, just like sitting there for a while while everyone has just left and we’re just sitting in Grayson just kind of like thinking about everything that’s happened this year. It’s just really cool. Yeah. And then I was and then while we were sitting there, I was trying to take advantage of the moment and like respond to some comments and then clip up the the video to throw it on Instagram really fast, which was kind of fun. Uh will you be showing the interview with Jesse? So, it wasn’t a full interview. He just Brendan was able to get some footage of him coming and talking to us and so we didn’t have he was so busy and like I’m so grateful that he came up and talked to us like that great on him for doing that. Uh but it wasn’t a full interview. Hopefully one day we’ll get him on and have a full interview with him. Um but it was just like a quick conversation that we had. Uh but we’re going to try to put all of that footage together in some sort of video. Um so yeah, we’ll we’ll have that there. Um, yeah. So, so it’ll either be as its own small clip on here or it will be in a in a larger video. We’re we’re working through the footage right now. And again, for those who weren’t on earlier, shout out to to Brendan Norton who’s working on a documentary and and helped us out with with the filming, which was really, really helpful. So, thank you. Uh, Emily, where do you see the Banana Breakdown podcast next year from this time? I honestly don’t know and couldn’t guess other than from a from a number of subscribers or viewers side. I don’t know. But from a an output perspective, we’re going to keep doing weekly weekly breakdowns, weekly interviews, whatever whatever you guys need. So, if you guys have anything that you want to see on the podcast in the future as we go into the end right now and then as we come into next season, like we can make this whatever we want. And so, whatever whatever you guys want to see. We appreciate the community that we’ve built here. Um, and so whatever you guys want to see, uh, you know, we’ll we’ll try to do our best to to do that. Whatever types of videos or interviews or whatever like that. So, um, Liz, yeah. Were you guys standing for the whole game? Yes. So, we were actually, so we were standing from 1:00 when we got there for the interviews until the interviews ended, probably 3:30 or 4. And then we went over to the benches and sat down for a bit. And then whenever the gates opened at whatever it was like 4:30 or 5, we ended up getting up because we wanted to make sure that our seats were standing room only. So if there was pe if there were people that were going to take the benches, we we let them take it. So we ended up standing from five o’clock until the game ended. So um yeah, standing in that same position with the glove on ready to go and it it worked out. And then we yeah went to the airport after straight there. We went, guys, we went straight to We did not get a hotel. We went straight to I will never do this again. It was so worth it, but gosh, it was crazy. So, we went game ended. We got some stuff out, talked to some more people, got to uh yeah, talk to some more people at the end, got a picture with uh Chad and Mo and Josh, which was which was cool. Um and then we got on got in Uber and the and the the Uber driver was like, “Taking you to the airport. are there flights this late? And we’re like, uh, well, our flight doesn’t actually board until 5. And she’s like, uh, is the airport open? Like, is this gonna Yes, we checked. It’s open 24 hours. We’ll be fine. We’re just we’re just going to go there. And so she dropped us off. She she was so she was really nice, but like she was uh nervous for us. Yeah, she was nervous. And so, yes, we went straight to the airport and I was planning on watching the BYU game, the football game, BU versus Arizona, which got had this rain delay, which was perfect for me because then by the time I was able to watch it, it was only halftime. And so, uh, I got to watch the second half in the airport. I was just going to watch it on my phone, but they were showing it on a TV in the airport. And so, I watched the whole game. And Brandon didn’t could he does not care about football at all. And so I’m watching it. I’m the only one in this airport in Savannah that cares at all. And I’m like trying to not like be really into it or whatever. There was one time I threw my hat on the ground. I wish I got that on video, but I did not. I have a I have one video of Sammy like so intently like watching the screen. Um so maybe maybe we’ll throw that footage out there somewhere. We’ll see. this empty airport and there was a random TV. It was literally a TV on like a TV st like a moving rolling TV stand and it happened to have the game on. We literally walked in and Sam was like, “That’s the BYU game.” So, it was pretty funny. Um, they want to see Yeah, I don’t think we have it. It’s not on the laptop at the moment. Uh, Molly, how long have y’all been streaming? Um, so tonight just a little over an hour. And if you’re asking for for long-term, we’ve been doing this podcast since March of this year, and we’ve done a couple live streams throughout, but we’ve started to transition to doing a weekly live stream. So, as of right now, we’re looking at Wednesday nights next week being our next live stream, and and we’re we’re trying to lock down a schedule for the rest of the offseason. So, we’ll share that with you guys as soon as we have it. But, super super exciting. And yeah, so then we finished that game and then we tried to sleep. So the so the the airport’s open 24 hours, but TSA doesn’t open till 3:30. So we are there we get there around midnight, right? And then we watch finish up the game. And so I’m Brandon got super energized because he caught the foul ball. I got super energized because this game went to double overtime. And so I’m like can’t even fall asleep if I tried at this point. Even though it has been literally we pulled an allnighter almost two nights in a row basically. Yeah. Two nights in a row. And so finally we’re able to sleep for like an hour and a half in the main terminal and then we wake up to go through TSA and then we sleep for another hour and a half after that like at our gate. Those were the most comfortable chairs of the weekend was through the gate in Savannah through the TSA in Savannah. The chairs by the gate by gate two. Um, I think they’re all the same chairs, but we slept like a rock. Like both of us were just out immediately in those chairs. Uh, slept for an hour and a half. Um, and and then sorry, that’s that’s a great question. How old are you guys? How much are your body hurting? It hurts pretty bad right now. Yes. Uh, yeah. I’m I’m 27. 26. So, like we can we can we can do it, you know, like it was it was the only way that it would work with like getting flights there and back in the cheapest way possible and all of that, but we’ve definitely we’ve talked about it again and like we would love to make it out to another tour championship in the future to other games, but we got to go a little slower the next couple times probably. So, we get back. We have a super long layover in Dallas because our flight got delayed. I was so frustrated by it was already like a three-hour window between the flights and then it extended to like four or four and a half. So, we got a pulled pork sandwich in the airport. Uh yeah, the pull pork sandwich was great. Uh Texas barbecue. Perfect. Um Yep. And and then we got home and then Yeah. had to work today. So, uh, straight from work over to here to do this live stream. Subscribe so that we don’t have to keep going back to our day jobs and we can I’m just kidding. Uh, yeah, it’s Yeah, so that we did that so that we didn’t have to miss any any work and so also so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. But I think it’s just uh just we should Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ll probably get a hotel next time and and let ourselves sleep a little bit. But I really appreciate everyone being on the live stream today. Our our next live stream is going to be next Wednesday uh at at 8:30 Eastern time. We’re excited to do more of these. Um but uh yeah, we’re we’re really excited for all of you being here and we’re going to have a lot more breakdowns coming. We filmed a ton of interviews that are be going to be coming on this channel and then we’ll also post them uh some of them across other social media. So we appreciate everyone here. And uh before we go, I do have another question here of the Thomas Brandon. Will you be trying for foul ball number two? Yes, 100%. I just a glove in a dream. Just a glove in a dream. Um it will it’s very unlikely that it will happen. And Grayson Stadium is probably the best place for it where you go to like Angel Stadium, there’s 40,000 fans. Like very unlikely. I will bring my glove to every game and I will try. Um but yeah, most likely that was a once in a-lifetime thing. It will never happen again, but I will give it my best to get a second one. It’s so much fun to see and and again, bring your glove to a game when you get the chance. It’s It’s so so cool. Eli, I will rant about BYU’s win. No, we’re probably gonna hopefully we’ll have an interview. So, I don’t want to Whoever we interview will just uh I probably won’t want to hear that. Uh, wait. What? Really? No. Okay, that that would be cool. I I think that the the thing is is that I think it could easily be Zach Phillips, though. His his Falcon was pretty cool. Yeah, the tail. I think that one’s going to win. There’s some There’s some good the kid that won it for the tailgator. Their first ever win. I think that’s got to be the one. No, I think so too just because of the the impact to the game where mine impacted a little bit where they helped the party animals win, but they were already up three to zero. They ended up winning four to zero. So there was already two outs, but then the tailgator won. He caught the game, the ball to end the game to make the tailgator win their first ever like first ever win. So yeah, probably probably going to be that kid if we had to put our finger on it. Um but yeah, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. And um yeah, Liz, oh yeah, maybe uh hopefully you’ll be a nominee. That would be great to be a nominee, but yeah, I I think that overall if I was voting, I’d probably vote for the Tailgator cannon. But no offense, I would too. But anyway, I appreciate you guys support. Thank you guys so much. You guys are the best. Uh Banana Ball’s the best show in sports. You guys are the best fans in sports. Uh just awesome stuff. So, thank you guys so much. This This might be the only time in my life I say it, but go party animals. Go party animals. Champions. Let’s go. Champions in the first ever tour championship. Thank you everyone. and have a great night.
We went to the first ever tour championship for Banana Ball and helped the Party Animals win the game!! We had such a fun time there and break down the full experience in this video!
If you are new to our podcast, we do a weekly livestream where we give you an inside look into all things Banana Ball from 2 fans who interview players and break down each game! Your hosts Brandon likes to go Bananas and Sammy is the Life of the Party!
You can read more about my experience here that I wrote for Bananas on SI, part of the Sports Illustrated Network: https://www.si.com/onsi/savannah-bananas/news/savannah-bananas-fan-helped-the-party-animals-win-the-1st-ever-tour-championship-by-catching-a-foul-ball-for-an-out
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