Party Animals Return to Grayson Stadium for a Sold-Out Rematch With the Bananas
Historic Grayson Stadium has hosted Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle in exhibition games stretching back to 1926. On September 11, the ballpark on Savannah’s east side adds another line to that résumé: a sold-out, three-game homestand between the Savannah Bananas and their fiercest rivals, the Party Animals, with a playoff spot on the line for both teams.
Gates open at 5:30 p.m. for Friday and Saturday’s games, with the show starting at 6:30 p.m. Sunday shifts to an afternoon start, gates at 11:30 a.m. and first pitch at 12:30 p.m. All three games are sold out, continuing a run that has followed the Bananas to football stadiums, minor league parks and now back to the 1,700-seat ballpark where the whole thing started.
A rematch neither team can afford to lose
The timing raises the stakes past a typical stop on the world tour. Savannah enters the series in first place in the Banana Ball Championship League at 30-22, riding a four-game winning streak. Party Animals arrive having won two of three against the Firefighters in Billings, Montana, a series that pushed their record to 27-27 and lifted them into third place with four games separating them from the top of the table.
Both teams know what a series like this can do to the standings. Party Animals infielder Michael Ballard watched his team’s fortunes turn in Montana and said the leap in competitiveness has changed how the roster approaches every series left on the schedule.
“You got to be a little more focused, especially with everything that’s going on in our games,” Ballard said of playing under Banana Ball’s inning-by-inning scoring format, where a team earns a single point for winning an inning regardless of the score. “You got to be so honed in on, hey, we can’t let up one run right here.”
That format means Friday and Saturday’s games could turn on a single inning rather than a lopsided score, a wrinkle that keeps sold-out crowds standing through the middle innings instead of settling in once one team pulls ahead.
What the ballpark itself brings to the series
Grayson Stadium was built in 1926 as Municipal Stadium, then rebuilt in 1941 after a hurricane tore through Savannah. The city renamed it for William L. Grayson, a local sports figure, and the ballpark has carried that name for more than eight decades. Long before Banana Ball played its first game there, Grayson hosted barnstorming legends: Ruth, Robinson, Aaron and Mantle all played exhibition games on the same field where the Bananas now perform between-innings routines for sold-out crowds.
Food and non-alcoholic drinks come included with the price of admission, from hot dogs and chicken sandwiches to stadium specialties like the Garbage Can Nachos. Parking near the stadium is limited enough that the team runs free shuttle buses from two off-site lots, Savannah Arts Academy and Myers Middle School, with shuttles running continuously from 4:15 p.m. until 90 minutes after the final out. Fans who catch a foul ball still get credited with an out for their team, one of Banana Ball’s signature rule changes and a detail that keeps gloves in the stands as busy as bats on the field.
A Dunkin’ appearance rounds out the weekend. Players and cast members serve coffee and donuts at a Pooler location on Saturday morning, September 12, from 9 to 11 a.m., before the second game of the series that evening.
A bigger stage than the last homestand
Banana Ball’s national television footprint looks nothing like it did the last time these two teams shared a field in Savannah. ESPN and Disney+ expanded their partnership with the league for the 2026 season to 25 exclusive games, more than double 2025’s 12-game slate, with select matchups also airing on ABC, ESPN2 and truTV. Disney+ will stream the Banana Bowl championship game in October exclusively, and the broadcast buildup around a series this competitive gives national viewers a reason to tune into a September series that would once have counted as a routine tour stop.
Party Animals outfielder Jake Skole, in his fourth year with the team and the league’s regular-season MVP in 2025, has watched that shift firsthand. He described the smaller venues on this year’s tour, like Dehler Park in Billings, as a contrast to the scale the Bananas now play at.
“I think I speak for all of us, the smaller venues get a little more intimate,” Skole said. “We get to have a little more one-on-ones with some fans, and it’s not as hectic with the 10,000 to 50,000 stadiums we’ve played in.”
Grayson Stadium splits the difference. It’s the smallest regular home the Bananas play in all season, but a sold-out crowd there carries an atmosphere built over a century of baseball in the same seats, not a football stadium retrofitted for a weekend.
Looking toward October
If the current standings hold, a Bananas-Party Animals series in October would look almost identical to this one, except as a two-game BBCL playoff round rather than a September exhibition. Grayson Stadium has already published its playoff dates: the 2-seed hosts the 3-seed on October 2 and 4, sandwiched around the top seed’s series against the fourth-place team. Every point the Party Animals pick up against Savannah this weekend edges them closer to holding that matchup at home instead of on the road.
For now, the series is the next stop on a tour that has sold out college football venues and minor league parks across 45 states this year, landing back where Banana Ball began with two teams that know exactly what’s riding on the outcome.
The rivalry itself has grown alongside the league. Party Animals were built as Savannah’s dedicated foil, a team designed from the start to give the Bananas a rival worth selling tickets around, and the format has worked well enough that the two clubs now headline tour stops the way a heavyweight title fight headlines a boxing card. Fans who bought tickets to this series months ago did so without knowing it would double as a playoff preview. That it has says as much about how far the Party Animals have come after their slow start to the year as it does about anything Savannah has done to stay on top.
Sunday’s series finale could shape the standings on its own. A series win for either team pushes the loser further from the top of the table with less than a month of BBCL baseball left before the playoff seeding locks in. Grayson Stadium has seen plenty of meaningful baseball in its century of existence. Three sold-out nights against the league’s biggest rivalry could end up ranking among the more consequential.
