Kyle Jackson Turned a Back Injury Into Banana Ball Stardom
- Kent State coach Jeff Duncan says the showmanship fans see from Savannah Bananas star KJ Jackson today is the same personality he coached in college, not a persona built for the cameras.
- A back injury pushed Jackson toward an interest in acting and modeling, which led his college coaching staff to connect him with the Bananas for a tryout in Columbus.
- Jackson credits his Kent State teammates, not just his own talent, for the player and performer he became once he joined Banana Ball.
A showman before anyone was watching
Kyle “KJ” Jackson does a backflip on the field every time his name gets called, and the Savannah Bananas crowd gets louder every time he does it. It looks like a move built for social media. Jeff Duncan, who coached Jackson at Kent State University, says it is closer to the opposite. The energy came first. Banana Ball just gave it a stage big enough to match.
“Kyle always had a theater to him, a theatrical to him,” Duncan told Banana Ball Insider. “He played with a lot of energy. And so this is perfect for him. The Bananas is a perfect fit for him.”
The hitter behind the highlight reel
Before the dancing and the trick plays got clipped and shared, Jackson was simply a talented college hitter from Bowling Green, Ohio. Duncan remembers him as a player who got more comfortable, not less, when a game got tight.
“He was known to be very clutch,” Duncan said. “He had many big-time hits for us at Kent State.” One still sticks with the coach: a three-run home run that beat Western Michigan in the opening round of the Mid-American Conference Tournament after Kent State fell behind by two runs.
“He can run. He had power. He was a left-handed hitter and he had arm strength,” Duncan said. “Super athletic.” Then he went further. “If he didn’t have a back issue, he could be in the big leagues. That’s how talented he was.”
Duncan is not speaking as an outsider guessing at pro potential. He played nine professional seasons himself, including time in the majors with the New York Mets, and has coached players who went on to be drafted into affiliated baseball. Kent State currently has three alumni in the major leagues. Jackson is the program’s lone Banana.
A back injury changed the plan
Jackson’s path to Savannah started with a setback. Back surgery in his college career forced him to think about life without baseball, and he told his coaching staff at his senior meeting that he had an interest in acting and modeling instead. Duncan’s staff knew the Bananas’ head coach personally and passed Jackson’s name along. He drove to Columbus to audition.
“The rest of history,” Duncan said. “They put them on the Visitors immediately, and then within the year, which is amazing, it doesn’t happen like this, he was on the Bananas. And now he’s one of the most popular Bananas.”
Jackson’s own trading card, produced by his alma mater, lists sports psychology as his major and theater performance as his minor, a combination that reads less like a coincidence and more like a job description for what he does now.
The teammates who built the foundation
Jackson has never treated his Banana Ball career as a solo act. Asked about the people who shaped him, he pointed straight back to his college roster.
“Yeah, all those guys, they’re still my best friends,” Jackson said. “They are still the reason I am who I am. They supported me, they held me accountable, they did all the things that a good teammate should do and I’m very blessed to have had them in my corner throughout all those years.”
That loyalty runs both directions. Duncan still checks in on Jackson, saw his parents at a recent game, and follows his former player’s career the way a proud alumnus follows a program.
“It’s been so cool to see his journey,” Duncan said.
What Banana Ball actually revealed
There is an easy story to tell about entertainment-focused baseball turning ordinary players into performers. Jackson’s story runs the other way. The talent, the clutch hitting, the arm strength, the personality, all of it existed before Banana Ball found him. The league just built a format where none of it had to be hidden behind a straight face.
“What you’re seeing in Banana Ball is exactly how he was as a player here,” Duncan said. Now 23 and three seasons into a career that has taken him to sold-out ballparks across the country, Jackson describes the job in simpler terms than his coach does.
“My favorite part about being a Banana, I would say it’s really just the interactions that I’m able to have with the people and just the experiences I’ve had as a young 23-year-old straight out of college,” Jackson said. “Being able to travel, play to these sold-out crowds and just interact with the people and hopefully impact a couple people along the way.”
Duncan sees a throughline between his program and his former player’s new one. “We play with a lot of energy,” he said. “Just like you see Kyle Jackson, his brand, our brand of baseball is very similar.” For a Kent State team that reached the College World Series in 2012 and has sent a steady stream of players into affiliated baseball, having one alumnus turn into a national Banana Ball name is not a strange footnote. It is, in Duncan’s telling, exactly the kind of player his program tends to produce.
Jackson is not the only Kent State graduate who found a home with the Bananas. AJ Scilla, a 2024 graduate, spent years wearing the suit of Flash, the team’s mascot, before moving into a full-time role coordinating the club’s touring operations. Scilla has said his public relations coursework prepared him for the marketing side of the business better than he expected, and that the same energy Kent State brings to its own athletics translates directly onto a Banana Ball tour stop. Two graduates from the same program, on the same roster, is not something either the university or the Bananas planned for, but it says something about the kind of personality Kent State athletics tends to produce.
Sources:
- https://www.si.com/onsi/savannah-bananas/news/before-kj-jackson-became-a-savannah-bananas-star-his-college-coach-already-saw-the-showman-01m1cpbxmtdw
- https://www.kent.edu/magazine/issue/2025/10/savannah-bananas
