Who owns the Savannah Bananas? Meet Jesse Cole, the yellow suit-clad 'Banana Ball' ring leader

The Savannah Bananas continue to enthrall casual and hardcore baseball fans alike throughout the summer months.

The Hostess City of the South has rarely seen such a spectacle unfold beneath its crouching willows. The yellow-clad warriors are neither canary nor songbird. Rather, they’re both, flitting across the red-clay terrain to dance, sing, and hit.

Perhaps it’s a novelty, but Bananas’ games have proven profitable as of late. As multinational firms, including ESPN, embrace the barnstormers, their shadow grows larger.

So, who sits atop the hierarchy in Savannah’s front office? And how has he shaped the way the organization has developed over the years? Here’s what you need to know.

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Who owns the Savannah Bananas?

The Bananas are owned by Jesse Cole, a curiously dressed Wofford graduate who also holds majority stake in the Party Animals and the Firefighters.

Cole, who sports a gleaming yellow suit before every game, a la The Man with the Yellow Hat, has money tied up in a number of business holdings. He founded Fans First Entertainment, the corporation that looms like a specter over Savannah’s favorite baseball team.

Under Cole’s stewardship, the Bananas have served up a number of eye-catching promotions, including grandma beauty pageants, Flatulence Fun Night, and a “human horse race” (whatever that means).

“Every night, we want to do things people have never seen before on a baseball field,” Cole told Good Morning America in July.

Cole is a baseball enthusiast, having flocked to dusty diamonds throughout his youth. He wanted to offer an alternative to the turgid showings that marked occasional MLB contests in pre-pitch clock antiquity. Their solution: the Bananas, formerly a college summer baseball team.

“We don’t study other sports teams,” Cole told Robert Glazer on the “Elevate” podcast. “We study people who create remarkable experiences, and we’re obsessed with that.”

Cole and his team’s tenets continue to bear fruit in the years since Savannah’s 2016 inception. The Bananas reportedly yielded more than 1 million viewers during their sellout game at Fenway Park on July 5.

“We’ve come a long way,” Cole wrote on his LinkedIn. “When we first started, we could have never imagined we’d even get the chance to be on ESPN, let alone broadcast our game on primetime.”

There’s reason to believe that performances like that will be the norm, too.

“Numbers don’t excite me,” Cole said. “It’s not the dollars or money that excites me anymore. It’s the doing things that have never happened before in our game and for our fans. That’s what really excites me. That’s what I focus on.”

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