The “baseball” sensation will travel to 45 states in 2026, and one three-day stop includes Tacoma.
Move over Tacoma Rainiers — Banana Ball is taking over Cheney Stadium. For three days anyway.
The Banana Ball World Tour will stop in Tacoma next spring, the exhibition league announced this week. To snag a ticket, which starts at $35, your best shot is to enter the lottery between now and Oct. 31. Then a random drawing will open the ticketing portal.
On deck is not the Savannah Bananas, the first team to gain fame for their baseball-adjacent antics. Instead, May 22-24, the pretty-in-pink Party Animals will take on the newest member of the newly formed Banana Ball Championship League, the Indianapolis Clowns — the rebirth of a team that was, according to ESPN, “the Negro Leagues’ version of the Harlem Globetrotters” that ran from 1935 to 1989.
The all-in-good-fun game has proclaimed itself “the greatest party in sports.” Since its 2018 debut, fans have packed stadiums across the country — and occasionally abroad — for a raucous few hours of a particular brand of baseball, interrupted often by backflips, dancing and whatever else the players can conjure.
They usually play in minor-league stadiums, but in 2024, the Party Animals and the Savannah Bananas met in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 41,000 people at the Houston Astros’ Minute Maid Park.
Next year will mark the official inaugural season of the six-team league, reported ESPN in October. Teams will meet in front of more than 3 million fans at 75 different stadiums in 45 states, including giant arenas like Texas A&M’s Kyle Field with 102,000 seats, the New Orleans Saints’ Superdome and the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium.
Cheney Stadium holds 6,500.
Banana Ball has a set of 11 unique rules, from a strict two-hour limit of the game’s run-time to an automatic out if a fan catches a foul ball. It’s also scored not by runs but by runs-per-inning — the team with more runs in an inning receives one point, save for the final inning when “every run counts.” Other no-nos: no walks, no visiting the mound, absolutely no bunting.
What can you expect from this epic matchup of Clowns and Party Animals? In one video on the latter’s website, a player struts onto the field in pink pants and a black shirt, suggestively unbuttoned, with the neon-colored logo. He’s holding a goose. Why? No one knows.
The game will be an almost-homecoming for at least one Party Animal: centerfielder Andy Cosgrove hails from Kirkland, according to the team bio page.
Banana Ball in Tacoma
- Where/When: Cheney Stadium, May 22-24
- Tickets: lottery open now through Oct. 31, details at wertacoma.com/bananaball
Category: General Sports
