August 21, 2024 • 41 mins
Join Parney and the Pub Club as they welcome Jesse Cole, the visionary behind the Savannah Bananas and the founder of Fan First Entertainment who is revolutionizing baseball.
Parney, Cheats, and MP dive deep into Jesse's journey—from his early days in Minor League Baseball where he first crossed paths with Parney, to the inspirational figures who shaped his journey. Discover the story behind one of baseball’s most innovative minds in this can't-miss conversation!
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Follow Cheats @BBallMixtape on Twitter @blackbaseballmixtape on Instagram and listen to the Black Baseball Mixtape: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-black-baseball-mixtape/id1654357631
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, party from the Party Time podcast talking to
you about West Broad Honda. That's right, our buddy STEVEP
running the show over at the corner of Broad Street
and Glenside Drive. Or if you're unlike Joe T and
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(00:21):
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Speaker 3 (01:34):
Hell yeah, Hey everybody, Party Time, Party Parnell.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Here are very great innings coming up for you right now.
This is any number seven. We have the Party pub
Club here cheats from the Black Baseball Mix to it.
What Up Cheats?
Speaker 4 (01:55):
What Up?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Party? I'm ready to go, man excited.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We have MP on the mike. MP. It looks like
you're in a high school playground or something right now.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
This is seventh inning stretch. We got to get outside,
right If.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You're at the seventh inning stretch right now, you're running
my beach house. So that's great. And then behind me
we have Joe T.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Joe T.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Are you excited for today's heading?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Hell yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Are you going to disagree with anything? I guess? Says?
Hell no, All right, this is going to be awesome.
This is someone who I've known for a long time,
and Party Time Podcast is all about relationships. That's all
we talk about the relationships that we built up for
the last thirty five years, and here's one of them.
(02:38):
Jesse Cole, owner and entertainer extraordinaire of the world famous
Savannah Bananda's Jesse, what's up, Buddy Parny?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
This took way too long, my friend, to make this happen,
many many years you and me recording having some fun.
I am fired up to be with you, my friend.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, we're really excited to you as well. And on
the Parting Time podcast we always talk about the relationships
that we build and Jesse, you and I, I mean
it's been over a decade. Right when did we meet, Zach?
I think you saw me speak at the Winter meetings
one year.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Right, Yeah, I was this twenty four year old kid
running a baseball team in guest Tonia, North Carolina. Went
to the minor league promo seminar. I think we were
the only college summer baseball team they are represented. And
I saw you, you know, leading the promo seminar and
going around talking about the best promo ideas, but then
also asking every intern in the room to bring you drinks.
(03:36):
And I was like, I love this guy. I love
him very much, and I am all in and no,
it was that that was the first time that I
saw you, I think we might have interact briefly, but
grew a lot of respect and admiration for the energy
and the fund you brought. Man, jeez, it's fifteen sixteen
years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, you know every day now I feel older. And
when you just said that, I I feel old as well.
So obviously that's that's when we first were in the
same room together. Obviously you're you're I've said obviously twice
in one in one sentence, that's not good. Your life,
in Emily's life, well documented, is blown up. Let's just start.
(04:19):
Let's start now and go backwards if you're okay with that,
because again, this is a conversation. I'm very close with
the Norfolk Tides President general manager Joe Gregory. H He
sent me videos, he sent me pictures. The Savannah Banana
has crushed it this past recently with the Norfolk Tides.
(04:42):
As you guys travel the country, do you have pinched
me moments, Jesse or is this exactly the way you
laid it out?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I started in Gastowing, North Carolina. There were two fans
coming to the game, and there was two undred and
sixty eight dollars in the bank account my first day,
and I I didn't pay myself for three months, so I
was not picturing even selling one hundred tickets, let alone
selling out. Yeah, major league stadiums now. I think there's
been a few moments, but standing out at Fenway Park.
You know, a kid grew up thirty miles south of Boston,
(05:13):
got to be the honorary bat boy for the Red
Sox when I was five years old, and you know,
watched the Wade Bogs and Jody Reid and Mo Vaughn
and Phil Plantier and Roger Clemens and you know, the
first Clemens, I watched him all the time, and he
pitched for the Bananas at our first major league stadium.
So I never thought i'd have a guy seven time
Cy Young Award winner pitching for us. But then at
Fenway Park, to stand out there, it was we turn
(05:34):
the lights off and everyone put up there flashlights for
yellow with thirty seven thousand people, they're sold out crowd.
That those are moments that you look at you're like,
I could never ever ever imagine something like this. So yeah,
it's been a wild rollercoaster ride. But it's crazy because
you know, every weekend, something new is happening that I
never would have seen happen. I mean in Cleveland at
(05:55):
the Major League Stadium, we had twenty three trick plays.
We had a two times say Young Word winner pitch
for US. We had the fastest man on two hands
pinch run for US, Zion Clark. I mean, all these
moments are surreal, and I think, you know, we're just
I still feel like a kid running a baseball team.
I know that's how you felt many many years running
your teams.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, like those of us, there's
not very many people in life that get to, you know,
do something that they love, right, Like what is the
stat like ninety two percent of America hates going to
work every day. And I know that the energy is
extensive that you give to the Savannah bananas, and to
(06:35):
do it every day is not as easy as you
make it. Look. The same way with my thirty five
year career. People will be like, you know, what time
do you get there three in the afternoon. I'm like, yo, dog,
I get here at five thirty in the morning, and
I stayed till two in the morning, and I wake
up and rents repeat all over again. So I get
that your fan first, mentality and entertain all, like when
(06:56):
did all that start? Do you have that embedded you?
Is that like something that like did you have a moment?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
I mean I had I've had a lot of moments.
We've all had some moments. But the reality is no,
I mean failure. The best lesson you can have is
through failure constraints foster creativity. And I've had a lot
of constraints over my time. And you know, I think
there were certain moments when I was coaching. You know,
everyone thought I was gonna going a in coaching. You know,
I played ball my whole life. I was talking to
pro teams tore my shoulders like, oh, he'll go into coaching.
(07:27):
And I was coaching in the Cape Cod League, the Kettaliers.
Everyone in that team end up playing MLB. They were
is a solid team. And I'm sitting in the dugout
and I'm just watching and I'm realizing that I know
what's about to happen in the game. I know what
we're doing, I know what the pitching situation, I know
when we're gonna hit and run. I know what the
situations are in the game. And I was sitting in
the dugout, and I was bored out of my mind.
(07:48):
I'm sitting with some of the best players, and I'm
a coach, you know, yes, an assistant coach, but I
still had some things I did and I'm bored. And
I sat there and I was thinking, if I'm bored
and I understand the game, and I've played the game
my whole life, how is everyone else doing that's in
the stands right now or all the people that aren't
in the stands. And it was ironic. I didn't know
it at the time, but Walt Disney had the exact
(08:09):
similar moment when he was at Griffith Park. Every Saturday
was his day with his daughters, Diane and Sharon, and
he'd taken the Griffith Park and they'd go in the
Merry Go Round and he sat there and said, I
wish there was a place that adults and kids could
have fun together, and tada. That was his moment. What
if I built Disneyland? And my moment, sitting there in
that dugout, I was like, we need to make this
NonStop fun. And minor the leagues does a tremendous job that,
(08:32):
don't get me wrong, but there's only so much you
guys can do because of the constraints of MLB and
all that everything else. So I was like, well, what
if we created something completely wild crazy? What if players danced?
What if you know, we had a senior says of
dancing the bana nanas. What if we changed the rules
of the game and had a fan catch fal ball
as an actual out. And it all started with that
question of what if, and that starts everything, So you know,
(08:54):
that was the first Aha moment. But then not paying
myself for three and a half months and realizing that
I couldn't make this sustainable, I started reading every book
by PT about PT Barnum, about Walt Disney, about The
Grateful Dead, about circus La, about WWE. I started reading
Amazon everything about customer experience. And then that is like,
we need to be fans first and entertain always. Every
(09:17):
single decision we need to make, is it fans first
and focus on long term fans over short term profits.
And that was a journey of many failed experiments, but
that's what we focus on when we make every decision
from now on.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, and now, as you travel the country, you get
to see that coming to life. You know, every every day,
one of the other things. And I'm going to bring
you the pup cub pub Club in here in a second.
And Jesse, we do something here is it's not going
to surprise you. It's called the pub club. One shot.
We don't do we don't actually do a shot, but
it's called a one shot and cheats and mper He's
(09:48):
going to have one shot and asking you something to
get you to tell a story. But we're going to
do it right after, right after I ask you this
this particular question. We talk about relationship, We talked about,
you know, the connectivity of our lives and all that.
This weekend, I was I was looking at something online
(10:11):
and I noticed that you guys have a player now
the Savannah Banana is a Brandon Crosby. M Brandon Crosby
is from Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Did you know that I knew he was from the
Virginia area. Yes, I knew he was celebrating in Norfolk
pretty good this last past weekend.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, And so like that's one of the things I
wanted to ask you about, like entertain the thing that
I the thing that really struck me when you came
to Montgomery. And if I'm I might be wrong, But
where was it? Montgomery, the Montgomery Biscus the first traveling
show that you did. Is that right? Or was it
one of the first?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No, but it's a great story for you to tell. Okay,
the first one was the One City World Tour and mobile,
but Montgomery was one of the first five. I will
tell you that.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Okay, good, we're on the metal stand, yes, but you
know you made lost my train of thought because I
was fabricating something. But we were. We were upstairs after
the game, and what really struck me was how these players,
(11:15):
many who played professional baseball, were so bought into the
fan experience. How do you make that kool aid bro like,
like like seriously, like, how do you do that? Like
it's not even a sports thing to me anymore. What
you've done is a leadership thing. And the way that
they look at you and Emily, the way that they
(11:37):
everybody on your whole traveling squad, just like are so
bought in.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
How do you do that?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Well? I think it starts from it. It does start
from the top. And that's not just myself and Emily.
It's our president, Jared, it's our coaches. But they've seen
that we've gone through it, just like you Parney, that
you pull tarp and you help out, you get respect
and admiration for going through it. Emily and I are
extremely hands on owners and they know many of them.
How we started when we came to Savannah, and we
(12:07):
had this big dream, in this big vision, and we
are very vocal on who we are, what we stand for,
and where we're going. And I think the greatest leaders
are great repeaters and very clear on where they're going
and what they're doing in their vision. And so we
kept saying, Hey, we're going to make baseball fun. We're
going to change We're going to change the game here
starting in Savannah, which they never succeeded with attendants. We're
going to change the game. We're gonna get people to
(12:27):
believe in the way we're going to try to play
baseball and make it fun. And we told everyone that
the only problem was no one believed it. In the beginning,
we only sold two tickets in our first three months,
which party is a terrible business model, all right. And
so through those first three months we sold two tickets
and then on January fifteenth, twenty sixteen, we got the
(12:48):
phone call at four to forty five PM that we
were missing payroll and we're completely out of money. At
that point, I quickly transferred what I had in my
savings to cover payroll, and Emily Tournament said, Jesse, we
have no other options. We have to sell our house.
We sold our house empty, our savings account found an
absolute dump in Savannah. We got a twin airbed. She
didn't even get a king or a queen airbed.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
This is a party and BROSI just wanted to be
close to you. That's all.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
H that just want to be close to Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure that was the reason. And so we got
that twin airbed. And then we were literally grocery shopping.
We'd go into Walmart with a twenty dollars bill and
a ten dollars bill and grocery shop for the entire week,
thirty dollars for forty two meals. We did that for months,
and because we believed in it, we said, guys, we're
going to get through this. They have to experience that
(13:32):
first game. Once fans experience that first game and see
players deliver roses to little girls during the game, they
watched the Banana Nanas dance. They watched as we lift
up a baby in a banana costum up in the
air and saying na savan yah nahi. When they watch
all of this, they're going to believe in it. And
we told everyone on our stat that And fortunately that
first game, even though we were in green uniforms because
(13:53):
we weren't quite ripe, which is the actual truth, we
were wearing those green uniforms like those bananas I saw earlier.
All right, right there, We played terrible. We made six errors,
but they watched those moments, they watched the fans first
moments that we created, and they started telling everyone. And
from that moment on, they knew that we would sacrifice
because of our beliefs, and we would do it over
(14:13):
and over and over again. And we have. And so
that's why I think you have a team that believes
in us. When they see an owner or owners of
myself and Emily that believe so much, people don't realize.
In the One City World Tour, and right when we
played you the next year, I told everyone, I go, guys,
you know, in a couple of years, we're going to
sell out Fenway Park. And they looked at me like crazy,
and I kept going around bet against me, bet let's go,
(14:33):
and no one would do it. But it was kind
of that. It sounds cocky, but it was that confidence
in that belief. And I tell people we're gonna sell
out football stadiums, we're gonna take this all over the world.
And I tell because I believe in it. And so
if you want people to believe in it, you have
to be able to real have that conviction yourself. And
so that conviction has carried me. And then we say,
here's why we're gonna do it. We're gonna have no
ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. We're gonna
(14:54):
pay your taxes. There's gonna be no shipping fees. We're
gonna leave millions of dollars on the table. We're gonna
turn away ticket bro ers who have offered me over
a million dollars to get extra tickets. And I said
no immediately, because that is who we are, and that's
fans first. And when you share those stories over and
over again, people believe in it and they want to
jump on and make it happen. And that's what we've
seen happen.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It's just again, it's not it's not sports to me,
it's it's leadership in life. Let's bring in the pub
club one shot. Let's go to you cheats. We'll go
with you first, and we'll go to enjoying the show
so far. Yeah, all right, Joe T's locked in, Jesse.
So as long as you got Joe T locked in,
because you might not know this about Joe T, but
(15:35):
he's connected. So I don't know if a banana has
ever been whacked before, but Joe T knows how to
whack of banana. So cheats her up, buddy.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So I'm up first. I feel honored, Parney.
Speaker 6 (15:47):
It's a It's awesome that you mentioned Brandon as well,
because I was in Norfolk, Jess yesterday where the Crosby
family was honored for the Foster Yeah Cherry organization that
you do. I was completely blown away my first time
in Banana Ayan. One of the things that I wanted
to ask you, Jesse, and and just like hearing you talk,
(16:10):
I bet you that this is unintentional, like you probably
I don't even know if you register this, but one
of the things we do with the Black Baseball Mixtape
is to try to highlight diversity in the game. Brandon
we knew from from kind of hometown and we met
him and we flash Mitchell has come to the Richmond
area and done some charitable events. Todd Jackson, Jason Swan
(16:33):
on the Party Animals Prime who I met yesterday and done.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So what I was told, they were like cheats, what
you're doing.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
You have to come out to see this because not
only are we diverse on the field, but we have
about nine ish HBCU graduates on the field as well
that played HBCU baseball.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
What is it my question? I said, all that is
to ask.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
No one shot, bro one shot, But it's.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
So important to have diversity in the game. And you
represent what the bananas do, represent it all on the field,
off the field and so forth. Was that something that
was kind of that you were aware of or is
that just a core value of what the bananas are Jesse.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Well, I think, you know, you look at our past
and we learned a lot from the past, and you know,
we got compared to the Harlem Globe Trotters and we
are dramatically different than the Globetrotters. But I will say,
as someone who's done extensive research, what the Globe Trotters
did in the nineteen forties and fifties did. They fundamentally
changed the game of basketball, and they were the most
popular sports team in the world and sold seventy five
(17:41):
thousand tickets in Berlin. They beat the Lakers. They sold
Madison Square Garden now twice. Wilt Chamberlain chose to play
for the Globe Trotters before playing in the NBA.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
This is how.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Popular that team was. It was unbelievable. They changed the game,
and so we got so much inspiration from that. And
then you look at what the Negro leagues. You know,
we went to the Negro Leaguess Museum in Kansas City.
We took our whole team there and to see the
fun and the energy they brought to the game and
the trick plays and everything that they did. There's so
much unbelievable. And then the i mean the perseverance, you know,
(18:12):
to keep They were the first ones that invented lights. You know,
it wasn't Cincinnati, they were the ones that brought lights in.
The innovation that happened in the Negro Leagues and with
the Globe Trotters was second to none. And so for
us not to learn from some of the pioneers for
something people who have done some of the greatest things
in sports would be a huge miss. And so it
is completely it's intentional where we have our learnings. But
(18:33):
as far as great people, na, I mean they all
stand out. Flash has stood out since day one. I
mean he's the fastest man in baseball. But he's also
one of the greatest entertainers. All Right. You know Crosby
stood out in his tryout prime, blew us Away, Taj
and Swan, I mean the way they've grown and do
trick plays. And Swan is the most ripped man I've
ever seen a lie. So when he rips off his
shirt and he's got his six pack, has got his
(18:55):
own six pack, I mean, that is unbelievable. The showmanship.
And so I think it's the showmanship that we look for.
We're looking for the most talented and entertaining players in
the world and whoever that may be. And if we
can carry a little bit of legacy of the great
globetrotters that change the game and the great players from
the nee rulies to change the game, we hope we
can continue that.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Right. That's awesome. I mean that that I joke. I
joked about the question. Chief awesome question an awesome answer, which
brings me before we get to the MP, Jesse Cole,
Do you have a favorite trick play?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Because I have one.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I have one. Well, it's not a trick play, it's
a rule. But you go first, and I'll go after
you because we're hanging out in the bar right now.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Hanging on bar well with there's two things. So there's
the rules that that makes banable what it is. But
then I'm as excited about the trick plays. So so
the rules, you know, I know people love the fan
caught foul ball fornt out, it's great. I love batter
stealing first. But the rule we introduced this year is
going to change the game at some point, and that
is the Golden Batter rule. And so it's the idea
of your great best hitter can come up to bad
(20:00):
at any point in the game, at any time. So picture,
you know, back going the two thousand and four Red Sox,
Poppy comes up in the eighth inning, hits a home run,
but they're still down by one. He comes back up
in the ninth and gets another shot to hit. It's
the Mike trout for show. Heyo Tani World Baseball Classic.
That's that's one of my favorite favorite rules. But I'm
gonna I'm gonna go into the trick plays because this
(20:22):
has changed the game for us. Sorry, party, I'm taking
more into this bar. You know, you keep drinking. I'll
talk for a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Hey, why change now? This is forever and ever? Why
change now? I mean, remember when you came into Montgomery.
I was behind the bar. When you walked into the bar,
I was already back there.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yes, yeah, keep it, yes, yes exactly, you were going strong. Uh.
The backflip catch changed the game for us, So everyone
raises the bar. So Dr Meadows has done over fifty
backflip catches, but he did one in a game in
Savannah where he threw his glove and caught it bare
handed backflip, which is something like I don't know if
there's five people in the world that could do that.
So he's changed the game. From the outfield. Now they're
(21:01):
doing front flip catches, they're doing aerial catches, they're doing
tornadoes where they do a complete spin. And then Logan
Lacy has changed the game at third base because he's
doing this this ball where he can catch a ground
ball and do a jump up cartwheel and throw a
guy out in a cartwheel, and then sorry, last one,
I completely went over our first basement. Is now catching
the ball, a regular ball. He's catching his back or
(21:24):
catching above his head, which I know if this is
a podcast, you can't see anything what I just did.
But he's catching the ball over his head on a
ball thrown across. It's unbelievable. The trick plays, and having
almost fifteen a game is pretty pretty special. But I
want to hear yours.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, mine's the rule, and it was the fan catching
the foul ball because it happened in Montgomery, and I've
been doing this thirty five years, and I don't know
that I've ever seen a ballpark react when there was
a young kid that caught it. And you see it
all the time, Jesse, you probably remember this one. So
the kid caught it the place with nuts, and I
(21:59):
think it might even been the last out. And then
what really struck me, getting back to everybody's buy in
the party, animals and the bananas both ran up into
the stands, grabbed the kid, brought him down on the shoulders.
And you know, we always say in minor league baseball,
we're not in the baseball business. We're not in the
entertainment business. We're in the memory making business. People will
(22:20):
never forget that moment in Montgomery, Alabama where they knew
the kid or not. So that that to me. I
know that it's probably for you cliche. But the fan
catching fan catching the foul ball for and out is
my favorite rule that you have.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Make the fans the heroes. You know, at fifteen year
old caught a ball to win a game in North
Carolina and they did a whole front page story on
him in the paper the next day. I mean, that's
that's See, whenever we come up with something, we visualized
the perfect scenario, and it doesn't often happen, you know.
I mean when you know, I thought about the Living
Pinata promotion that we did where we put a person
in a costume and had kids hit them with many
(22:57):
bats while they threw canny in the air. Now that, hey,
there happened to me one night.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Now pass Jesse.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Hr disaster for us. But but the goal that you
think of what the perfect scenario is, and you know,
you hope you hit it, and that's what Obviously some
of those foul ball caught by fans have.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Been Yeah, that's really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
MP on the Mic.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas and Conversation on the
Pony Time podcast.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I'm here for the fashion conversation. We have a pants
mogul and now an underwear mogul. I mean, I got
my whole wardrobe right here. I love it. Uh, Jesse
you mentioned I mean now that you're big, you got
ticket brokers. I'm sure you got people who want to
franchise this all over the country. And now that it's big,
how do you manage the growth and keep it, keep
it your vision and not let it become, not let
(23:45):
it kaboom.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Well, this company's run by fans first and creative and
so creative drives everything. So what people don't realize is
that on every Tuesday, we go from ida session to
idea session to idea session. We have ott with our
creat team that's over the top ideas than we do
with our broadcast team. Then we do it with our
players than we do with our entertainment team. And so
that's five different idea meetings that we have and every Tuesday,
(24:09):
and that leads us to all new creative ideas every
single weekend. And that's why every night, we're doing ten
to fifteen things we've never done it before at a
baseball field. That's everything. And so that's why when people say, oh,
you're like the Globe Charts, I'm like, well, I appreciate it,
but they have the same show every night and the
Globe Charters. Our show is dramatically different every single night.
And that's why we have fans now travel around the country.
(24:29):
So when it looks to growth, my first mindset is,
all right, how can we keep the creative engine where
we're not burnt out, but we're driving it. And so
sometimes you have to push yourself to drive creative. So,
you know, major league stadiums, how do you make someone
sit sitting in you know, the upper deck in you know,
section four hundred and twenty two feel like they're a
part of it. I love that challenge because we'll make sure, Hey,
(24:50):
how do we have players go up there? How do
we have the band go up there? How do we
have Princess Potassia go up there? How do we get
our creative to create an experience up there? But yeah,
I mean I think it's it's it's very when I
look at the growth, I look at the game of
banana ball. And we aren't just trying to grow the
Savannah bananas. We're growing the game of banana ball. And
so how do you do that? Very well? Most teams,
most people when they start a league or a bunch
(25:11):
of owners get together, they say, all right, we're gonna
have eight teams, we're going to start a league. All right,
we're gonna get TV rights, we're gonna get a bunch
of sponsorship, and then we're going to try to sell tickets. No, no, no,
that's not how we look at things. We look at
how do you create fans first, then you have demand
that drives you to have to create more teams or
a league. So to give an example, the Party Animals
(25:32):
they started in twenty twenty. They now have more followers
than every Major League Baseball team. On TikTok they have
two million followers. They sold out their own headlining games
as past Yer twenty thousand tickets in Vegas in a
matter of minutes. Greenville, Greensboro, they sold out twelve games.
The Bananas weren't even involved. Okay, they're ready to have
their own headlining tour. The Firefighters they grewed almost five
hundred thousand followers. They have a big following now and
(25:54):
now they're going to develop their own headlining tour. Then
are we ready for a fourth team? And so we
make sure wherever we go they have fan base because
we don't have typical sponsorship. Our TV rights are done
in a completely different way than anyone else because now
we're doing it, there to have to be non exclusive.
Every game's on YouTube for free for our fans, so
enough to try to find where the game is or
find a paywall or can't get it. So we don't
(26:15):
take all the money that most leagues get from TV
rights or from sponsorship, and we pay all our fans
taxes and have no ticket fees, convenient fees and all that.
So we're leaving millions of dollars in the table. So
it's about fans first. So we will grow with more
teams and grow in areas that we know that, hey,
we're forced to do something for the fans because they've
demanded it before we say we're just gonna go jump.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Well, then here with the Party Time podcasts, I think
it's time for me to throw my hat into the ring.
I think that the fourth team should be the Parties
and we will wear these kind of pants.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, yeah, and shit, I'm just falling.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I'll go I'll be the manager if you want me to.
I'm Sumary time from the Squirrels, so I can go
be the manager. Right.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Well, I think you'd be a tremendous coach. I think
you'd be something party that there'd be a lot of
fun in that dugout.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
We're going to start to wind down here in a
little But I didn't. I wanted to tell you this story. Jesse.
You were you were recently in Buffalo not too long ago,
and a buddy of mine, who's one of the top
dogs at New Era, was at the game. Uh, and
he called me and he's like this, Jesse Cole, it's
like unbelievable party he goes. But for many, many years
(27:26):
you were the showmen of minor league baseball. Why didn't
you do something like that? And you want to said
to him, Jesse, you want to said to him, I
don't have the balls that Jesse Cole has. Right. So,
one of the things I talked about when I get
I talked to colleges and high schools is you know
about leadership is having the courage, courage, balls, whatever can
(27:49):
you just tell us a quick a quick story about that, like,
you know, do you you look back and reflect on
you know, I mean you told us today own party time,
all the stuff about you know, running out of money.
And I still don't know why Emily bought two twin
beds and not a king bed. But but wounds. We'll
talk about that later. But do you have a courageous
(28:11):
moment or a big ball moment that you want to
talk about.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
I like your language there, that's well situated for this.
I think you have to be willing to be misunderstood.
And if you're not getting criticized, you're playing it too safe.
And what I've learned from seeing I mean go back
to and I know I'm referencing him again, but Walt Disney.
I mean literally his dad said, you're going to fail
(28:36):
as an animator. You don't go into that. There's no
money in that. Everyone in Hollywood said snow White was
Disney's folly. It's going to fail. Even his brother and
his wife said, you're going to the theme park. Business
won't work. Look at all them. He was told every
step of the way on he's going to fail. He said,
it's not going to happen. It's not going to work.
And when we first came to Savannah, we were told
(28:58):
we were going to fail a college summer based team
which we started as before we went to professional and
when we first announced the team, we were told the
owners should be thrown out of town. You guys are
an embarrassment to the city. You'll never sell a ticket.
We actually saved all those and did a mean tweet
video on the year anniversary and half of them ended
up becoming ticket holders, which fun fact our first shipment
(29:19):
of banana shirts. There were too many ens on bananas.
We misspelled bananas on our first shipment of t shirts.
Our first game, we made every ticket all inclusive in
Savannah and we've done this since then. Every tick includes
all your Burger's hot dogs, chicken, sandwich, is, soda, water, popcorn, dessert,
everything for fifteen dollars. When we started, the line took
almost two and a half hours. People couldn't get food.
It was an absolute disaster. Then we set our first
(29:41):
ticket launch, which when we started creating Buzz, the whole
system shut down. Our first twenty four hour merch launch,
everything shut down. We did our Banana ball One City
World tour. We were told we'll never sell a ticket.
The first night we did it, the national anthem singer
showed up late, didn't get there on time, so we
had everyone try to sing. That went off terribly. The
sound broke down at the stadium. That didn't work. Then
(30:01):
we actually did our seven city world to our logistics.
One of our bar little trailers didn't make it. You know,
we didn't have a stuff didn't get there. We were
failing on our logistics. We have failed every step of
the way. Our first game in Buffalo on ESPN Primetime,
it didn't go off for the verse twelve minutes. The
anchor said, well, the Bananas can actually show the game
right now, so we'll just sit here and wait and
see if they're able to figure it out.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
We have failed every step of the way, and we've
told we were going to fail. When we left Coastal
Plainly Traditional Baseball to go to Bananabal, they said, this
is Jesse's joke. They will fail immediately. They're going to
be begging for money and begging for tickets. I have
saved a lot of those comments, and I don't look
for that really Esprine's inspiration, but I look at it
and say, all right, you're going to be doubted every
step of the way, and you're not thinking big enough
(30:45):
if you're not getting doubted, because it's the people that
don't get criticized, the people that aren't doing anything. So
I know whenever we do something take another level. If
we go to this next wave playing front one hundred
thousand fans in one night, two hundred thousand fans, we
try to break a record, people are going to say
it's terrible and you're going to fail. That fires me
up because that means we're thinking big and we're dreaming big.
And I want our people to know that, Hey, don't
focus on what couldn't be, focused on what should be,
(31:07):
don't focus the way it was, focus the way it
could be. And I just I get excited about that stuff.
So I share that with our team. And I don't
have a specific big ball story like you want, but
I'll tell you every step of the way, we are
told we are going to fail and it won't work,
and I think that's just part of the journey.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I've been nodding my head the whole show. Like you said, Jesse,
people can't see it. It's a podcast but when you
started telling that story, and Michael Phillips was a sports
writer in town when we moved here and Chets you
probably remember this too. The day we named the team
the Richmond Flying Squirrels, Jesse, you would have thought that
I had committed a federal crime. Like people were like,
(31:45):
wherever this ass came from, lit's send him back because
this is ridiculous. I'm embarrassed for our city. And I
just kept saying to people, give us a chance. We
know what we're doing, Like your kids are going to
love us, your kids are going to love Natzie of
us a chance. And now hopefully Cheats and Michael Phillips
would agree with this. I can't imagine Richmond, Virginia without
(32:07):
the Richmond Flying Squirrels being the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Guys, do you agree with or disagree with that?
Speaker 4 (32:15):
The go.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Joe t out on the Banana tour? Sometimes I wouldn't
let party.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I will say one known on that what happened is
no one has experienced him. So if you're just talk
you know, everyone talks and talks and talks and they
say they're gonna doing I'm I'm accused of that as well.
But then we try to back it up, and you
backed it up. If you were like another minor league
team that just didn't go about doing things differently, they
might have been right, but they backed it up. And
I think that's what it is. It's all comes down
to the experience, and you have to deliver on that experience.
(32:45):
And you did that. And that's why I love that challenge.
I love saying we're going to do this and people
are saying, oh, that might not work. I'm like, let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Let's go and look, I know, like like you mentioned
some failures along the way. I mean, I've had plenty
of promotional fellows throughout my career, like a shot not
taken as a shot missed. Right. I'm well, let each
guy give one more quick thing and then we're going
to wrap it up. But I want to ask you
one question myself. Every not every show, but most of
(33:11):
the shows you bring back a former major league player,
Bill Spacemanale, who I've worked with, was maybe the first
one you introduced me, and your wife introduced me to
Jake Peevey uh, and I feel like he and I
are brothers from a different mother, and like, like now
me and Peeve are cool, right, Is there a person
that you haven't had yet play for the Bananas that
(33:35):
you want to play for the Bananas.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
It's a good question. And being from Boston, obviously I
have the great memories of with the Red Sox, and
you know, I do think about Ortiz, I think about Pedro,
you know, I think about some of those guys that
truly had fun on the field. Even Manny being Nanny
would be perfect, and uh with with the with the Bananas.
But no, I mean I never thought John Cena would
(34:00):
play for us. I mean the people that end up
showing up and reaching out to us, that want to
be a part of it is special. So it's not
something I think about. I will say I see a
world in the next few years where a lot of
former MLB guys literally right and they're just finishing their career,
are going to start reaching out because what I watched,
(34:20):
as you know, Corey Kluber pitch for US a couple
of weeks ago, and two times, say young one Winter
and his family his kids got to watch him play.
And I watched Shane Victorino, another World Series champion, his
kids never got to see him playing, and got a
walk off with us, and I see the response of
their kids, and they're playing in front of a sold
out stadium and they don't have the pressure of the
fans and the contract and everything. They can go out
and have fun. And when we started playing the game
(34:42):
as kids, that's why we played the game. And so
my dream with all of this is all the former
MLB players that they gave so much to the game
that they can go on on a farewell tour with
us at sold out major league stadiums and tip their
hat to their fans and the fans can give it
back to them and have those special moments. Jason and
have said that to me. In the last game in
Cleveland he retired in twenty twenty, he didn't get to
(35:04):
have a moment in front of any fans. There were
no fans in the stands. And when we introduced him,
you know, obviously an All Star, huge fan favorite in Cleveland,
you could see the emotion in his face as he
tipped his hat. He's like, this is a moment that
means more than you know. And I felt so proud
to be a little part of that, to give that.
So I think in the next few years you're going
to see a lot of those moments, and I'm just
(35:25):
so glad we created something necking to create those. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
No, I think it's really cool.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Cheats party shot, partying shot.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
I'll just say this, the it's amazing hearing you recount
people doubting your vision, people doubting like you're the people
that you looked up to, like Walt Disney. I had
a very fun moment at the Bananas game with my
with my son who Parney, you know, Cam, and my
niece Maddie. They were waiting in a very long coach
(35:58):
rack line and I told them, hey, kids, this is
this probably isn't gonna happen because they've they've got to go,
they got to move and so forth. And they looked
at me and said, oh man, you're doubting us, but
we're gonna do it. So turns out they actually did
cut the line and they go they go to the
stage to do the final wrap ups, and a coach
(36:20):
rack sees my son and my niece and just and
COEs over and signs everything they needed to sign and
go up. And my kids looked at my family looked
at me and goes, you doubted me, Dad, But we
gotta go it.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So I just wanted to like those moments like that
with all of.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
Your players and the fact that you know, the little
young people, my son's nine was able to have those
moments and then look at me and they busted my
child for two hours on the drive back to Richmond,
saying you doubted us. He said, we couldn't do it,
but they did it. So that's all I wanted to
leave you, Jesse. With Jess, the way that you're inspiring
young people is pretty awesome.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Thank you. Find a way. They're gonna be very successful
when they get olders.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Find a way, kid, I promise it, Cam is going
to be very successful. MPO the Mike parting shot for
Jesse Cole, Buddy.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
What's the change you're proudest of that's not in baseball
related that you've brought to the world in baseball?
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Good question. The change that I'm most proud of? You know,
I think about our people. I think about what we
just referenced here. You know about the moment with Brandon
Crosby and his family. You know it's twenty twenty that
my wife, who's got one of the biggest hearts I've
ever I could never imagine anybody. She said, Jesse, you
(37:33):
know there's four hundred thousand kids in the US right
now who don't have a permanent home in foster care.
And I said, that's unbelievable. She goes, we have to
do something. In the middle of COVID, we got licensed,
we became foster parents, and so we took in a
two and a half year old girl that was having
some serious challenges, and then a couple months later took
in a six day old who was in the nick
to you, battling drug addiction. And those two girls we
(37:55):
ended up adopting in January. But what we saw is
there's something that we can do that's bigger, and we
came up with the idea of launching the nonprofit Bananas Foster,
and every night at every stadium we go to we
honor a family that's probably never got recognized in front
of people before, about a family that maybe has had
twenty kids come in their home, they've adopted four kids,
(38:17):
they've made such an impact, their heroes. And to see
the whole stadium stand and to see the emotions in
that moment, I think it's shown our people that you know,
there are so many amazing things that you can do
in this world. It's not just baseball. It's about bringing
people together. It's about caring, and it's about doing the
right thing and even when it's hard, because foster family
(38:38):
is one of the hardest things to do, and yet
every day we're finding out more people are signing up
for foster families. We're hearing it with Bananas foster and
I told I tell everyone this, you know, when we
only sold two tickets, I told people, I go, we're
going to sell out games at some point and we're
eventually gonna have a wait list to buy tickets. And
people look to be like I was crazy. And now
is the weight list approaches three million for tickets to
go to the Bananas game. I'm telling people, I don't know,
(38:59):
it's me ten years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years,
or a hundred years, but we're eventually going to have
a waitless in this country of families that are signing
up to be foster families, and we're going to make
it happen. And I believe in it, and I think
that's what I hope that we can show anyone that
anything can be accomplished when you dream it when you
believe in it and you go after it.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Well, what a way to conclude, because that's the most
meaningful thing, and I was going to bring it up.
I'm glad that you got that in there with mp
A Banana s Foster if there we can do anything
here in my league Baseball to tell because I know
our family has been touched with the fostering world. So
(39:39):
I think that's great. And you guys have just done
an amazing job in so many levels. And I think
that that last thing that you talked about and fower you,
I think that that's one of the things I'd want
to be remembered for, right, Like and you know me
and my pants have done the same thing, like the pants,
(40:01):
the pants or what make people rich and recognize me.
But I'm able to do some really impactful things because
I'm Parny pants, right And this is the last thing
I want to ask you, because people ask me this
every single day. Party Do you ever get tired of
wearing party pants? Jesse Cole? Do you ever get tired
of wearing a yellow suit and the yellow top hat.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I have more than nine of these. I wear them
every single day. This is who I am. This is
what I stand for, it's what I believe, and I
do not get tired one bit me too.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Great way to end it, guys, Thank you for being here.
Parney Pup Club Jesse Cole ending number seven of Party
Time is down. Joe t Oh Yeah, Joe T. Joe
Ta Jesse Cale you got three Joe t Hell Yes, buddy.
Thanks for joining us on the Party Time Podcast. Tell
your friends, tell your family, tell people you love hell
(40:52):
I don't care even tell people you don't like about
the Party Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Parny from
the Party Time Podcast asking you to follow, subscribe, follow
us on all your social media outlets, join the Party
Time family because you never know what's gonna happen on
the Partie Time Podcast
Hey, everybody, party from the Party Time podcast talking to
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Speaker 3 (01:34):
Hell yeah, Hey everybody, Party Time, Party Parnell.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Here are very great innings coming up for you right now.
This is any number seven. We have the Party pub
Club here cheats from the Black Baseball Mix to it.
What Up Cheats?
Speaker 4 (01:55):
What Up?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Party? I'm ready to go, man excited.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We have MP on the mike. MP. It looks like
you're in a high school playground or something right now.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
This is seventh inning stretch. We got to get outside,
right If.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
You're at the seventh inning stretch right now, you're running
my beach house. So that's great. And then behind me
we have Joe T.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Joe T.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Are you excited for today's heading?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Hell yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Are you going to disagree with anything? I guess? Says?
Hell no, All right, this is going to be awesome.
This is someone who I've known for a long time,
and Party Time Podcast is all about relationships. That's all
we talk about the relationships that we built up for
the last thirty five years, and here's one of them.
(02:38):
Jesse Cole, owner and entertainer extraordinaire of the world famous
Savannah Bananda's Jesse, what's up, Buddy Parny?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
This took way too long, my friend, to make this happen,
many many years you and me recording having some fun.
I am fired up to be with you, my friend.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, we're really excited to you as well. And on
the Parting Time podcast we always talk about the relationships
that we build and Jesse, you and I, I mean
it's been over a decade. Right when did we meet, Zach?
I think you saw me speak at the Winter meetings
one year.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Right, Yeah, I was this twenty four year old kid
running a baseball team in guest Tonia, North Carolina. Went
to the minor league promo seminar. I think we were
the only college summer baseball team they are represented. And
I saw you, you know, leading the promo seminar and
going around talking about the best promo ideas, but then
also asking every intern in the room to bring you drinks.
(03:36):
And I was like, I love this guy. I love
him very much, and I am all in and no,
it was that that was the first time that I
saw you, I think we might have interact briefly, but
grew a lot of respect and admiration for the energy
and the fund you brought. Man, jeez, it's fifteen sixteen
years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, you know every day now I feel older. And
when you just said that, I I feel old as well.
So obviously that's that's when we first were in the
same room together. Obviously you're you're I've said obviously twice
in one in one sentence, that's not good. Your life,
in Emily's life, well documented, is blown up. Let's just start.
(04:19):
Let's start now and go backwards if you're okay with that,
because again, this is a conversation. I'm very close with
the Norfolk Tides President general manager Joe Gregory. H He
sent me videos, he sent me pictures. The Savannah Banana
has crushed it this past recently with the Norfolk Tides.
(04:42):
As you guys travel the country, do you have pinched
me moments, Jesse or is this exactly the way you
laid it out?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
I started in Gastowing, North Carolina. There were two fans
coming to the game, and there was two undred and
sixty eight dollars in the bank account my first day,
and I I didn't pay myself for three months, so I
was not picturing even selling one hundred tickets, let alone
selling out. Yeah, major league stadiums now. I think there's
been a few moments, but standing out at Fenway Park.
You know, a kid grew up thirty miles south of Boston,
(05:13):
got to be the honorary bat boy for the Red
Sox when I was five years old, and you know,
watched the Wade Bogs and Jody Reid and Mo Vaughn
and Phil Plantier and Roger Clemens and you know, the
first Clemens, I watched him all the time, and he
pitched for the Bananas at our first major league stadium.
So I never thought i'd have a guy seven time
Cy Young Award winner pitching for us. But then at
Fenway Park, to stand out there, it was we turn
(05:34):
the lights off and everyone put up there flashlights for
yellow with thirty seven thousand people, they're sold out crowd.
That those are moments that you look at you're like,
I could never ever ever imagine something like this. So yeah,
it's been a wild rollercoaster ride. But it's crazy because
you know, every weekend, something new is happening that I
never would have seen happen. I mean in Cleveland at
(05:55):
the Major League Stadium, we had twenty three trick plays.
We had a two times say Young Word winner pitch
for US. We had the fastest man on two hands
pinch run for US, Zion Clark. I mean, all these
moments are surreal, and I think, you know, we're just
I still feel like a kid running a baseball team.
I know that's how you felt many many years running
your teams.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, like those of us, there's
not very many people in life that get to, you know,
do something that they love, right, Like what is the
stat like ninety two percent of America hates going to
work every day. And I know that the energy is
extensive that you give to the Savannah bananas, and to
(06:35):
do it every day is not as easy as you
make it. Look. The same way with my thirty five
year career. People will be like, you know, what time
do you get there three in the afternoon. I'm like, yo, dog,
I get here at five thirty in the morning, and
I stayed till two in the morning, and I wake
up and rents repeat all over again. So I get
that your fan first, mentality and entertain all, like when
(06:56):
did all that start? Do you have that embedded you?
Is that like something that like did you have a moment?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
I mean I had I've had a lot of moments.
We've all had some moments. But the reality is no,
I mean failure. The best lesson you can have is
through failure constraints foster creativity. And I've had a lot
of constraints over my time. And you know, I think
there were certain moments when I was coaching. You know,
everyone thought I was gonna going a in coaching. You know,
I played ball my whole life. I was talking to
pro teams tore my shoulders like, oh, he'll go into coaching.
(07:27):
And I was coaching in the Cape Cod League, the Kettaliers.
Everyone in that team end up playing MLB. They were
is a solid team. And I'm sitting in the dugout
and I'm just watching and I'm realizing that I know
what's about to happen in the game. I know what
we're doing, I know what the pitching situation, I know
when we're gonna hit and run. I know what the
situations are in the game. And I was sitting in
the dugout, and I was bored out of my mind.
(07:48):
I'm sitting with some of the best players, and I'm
a coach, you know, yes, an assistant coach, but I
still had some things I did and I'm bored. And
I sat there and I was thinking, if I'm bored
and I understand the game, and I've played the game
my whole life, how is everyone else doing that's in
the stands right now or all the people that aren't
in the stands. And it was ironic. I didn't know
it at the time, but Walt Disney had the exact
(08:09):
similar moment when he was at Griffith Park. Every Saturday
was his day with his daughters, Diane and Sharon, and
he'd taken the Griffith Park and they'd go in the
Merry Go Round and he sat there and said, I
wish there was a place that adults and kids could
have fun together, and tada. That was his moment. What
if I built Disneyland? And my moment, sitting there in
that dugout, I was like, we need to make this
NonStop fun. And minor the leagues does a tremendous job that,
(08:32):
don't get me wrong, but there's only so much you
guys can do because of the constraints of MLB and
all that everything else. So I was like, well, what
if we created something completely wild crazy? What if players danced?
What if you know, we had a senior says of
dancing the bana nanas. What if we changed the rules
of the game and had a fan catch fal ball
as an actual out. And it all started with that
question of what if, and that starts everything, So you know,
(08:54):
that was the first Aha moment. But then not paying
myself for three and a half months and realizing that
I couldn't make this sustainable, I started reading every book
by PT about PT Barnum, about Walt Disney, about The
Grateful Dead, about circus La, about WWE. I started reading
Amazon everything about customer experience. And then that is like,
we need to be fans first and entertain always. Every
(09:17):
single decision we need to make, is it fans first
and focus on long term fans over short term profits.
And that was a journey of many failed experiments, but
that's what we focus on when we make every decision
from now on.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, and now, as you travel the country, you get
to see that coming to life. You know, every every day,
one of the other things. And I'm going to bring
you the pup cub pub Club in here in a second.
And Jesse, we do something here is it's not going
to surprise you. It's called the pub club. One shot.
We don't do we don't actually do a shot, but
it's called a one shot and cheats and mper He's
(09:48):
going to have one shot and asking you something to
get you to tell a story. But we're going to
do it right after, right after I ask you this
this particular question. We talk about relationship, We talked about,
you know, the connectivity of our lives and all that.
This weekend, I was I was looking at something online
(10:11):
and I noticed that you guys have a player now
the Savannah Banana is a Brandon Crosby. M Brandon Crosby
is from Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Did you know that I knew he was from the
Virginia area. Yes, I knew he was celebrating in Norfolk
pretty good this last past weekend.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, And so like that's one of the things I
wanted to ask you about, like entertain the thing that
I the thing that really struck me when you came
to Montgomery. And if I'm I might be wrong, But
where was it? Montgomery, the Montgomery Biscus the first traveling
show that you did. Is that right? Or was it
one of the first?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No, but it's a great story for you to tell. Okay,
the first one was the One City World Tour and mobile,
but Montgomery was one of the first five. I will
tell you that.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Okay, good, we're on the metal stand, yes, but you
know you made lost my train of thought because I
was fabricating something. But we were. We were upstairs after
the game, and what really struck me was how these players,
(11:15):
many who played professional baseball, were so bought into the
fan experience. How do you make that kool aid bro like,
like like seriously, like, how do you do that? Like
it's not even a sports thing to me anymore. What
you've done is a leadership thing. And the way that
they look at you and Emily, the way that they
(11:37):
everybody on your whole traveling squad, just like are so
bought in.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
How do you do that?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Well? I think it starts from it. It does start
from the top. And that's not just myself and Emily.
It's our president, Jared, it's our coaches. But they've seen
that we've gone through it, just like you Parney, that
you pull tarp and you help out, you get respect
and admiration for going through it. Emily and I are
extremely hands on owners and they know many of them.
How we started when we came to Savannah, and we
(12:07):
had this big dream, in this big vision, and we
are very vocal on who we are, what we stand for,
and where we're going. And I think the greatest leaders
are great repeaters and very clear on where they're going
and what they're doing in their vision. And so we
kept saying, Hey, we're going to make baseball fun. We're
going to change We're going to change the game here
starting in Savannah, which they never succeeded with attendants. We're
going to change the game. We're gonna get people to
(12:27):
believe in the way we're going to try to play
baseball and make it fun. And we told everyone that
the only problem was no one believed it. In the beginning,
we only sold two tickets in our first three months,
which party is a terrible business model, all right. And
so through those first three months we sold two tickets
and then on January fifteenth, twenty sixteen, we got the
(12:48):
phone call at four to forty five PM that we
were missing payroll and we're completely out of money. At
that point, I quickly transferred what I had in my
savings to cover payroll, and Emily Tournament said, Jesse, we
have no other options. We have to sell our house.
We sold our house empty, our savings account found an
absolute dump in Savannah. We got a twin airbed. She
didn't even get a king or a queen airbed.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
This is a party and BROSI just wanted to be
close to you. That's all.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
H that just want to be close to Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure that was the reason. And so we got
that twin airbed. And then we were literally grocery shopping.
We'd go into Walmart with a twenty dollars bill and
a ten dollars bill and grocery shop for the entire week,
thirty dollars for forty two meals. We did that for months,
and because we believed in it, we said, guys, we're
going to get through this. They have to experience that
(13:32):
first game. Once fans experience that first game and see
players deliver roses to little girls during the game, they
watched the Banana Nanas dance. They watched as we lift
up a baby in a banana costum up in the
air and saying na savan yah nahi. When they watch
all of this, they're going to believe in it. And
we told everyone on our stat that And fortunately that
first game, even though we were in green uniforms because
(13:53):
we weren't quite ripe, which is the actual truth, we
were wearing those green uniforms like those bananas I saw earlier.
All right, right there, We played terrible. We made six errors,
but they watched those moments, they watched the fans first
moments that we created, and they started telling everyone. And
from that moment on, they knew that we would sacrifice
because of our beliefs, and we would do it over
(14:13):
and over and over again. And we have. And so
that's why I think you have a team that believes
in us. When they see an owner or owners of
myself and Emily that believe so much, people don't realize.
In the One City World Tour, and right when we
played you the next year, I told everyone, I go, guys,
you know, in a couple of years, we're going to
sell out Fenway Park. And they looked at me like crazy,
and I kept going around bet against me, bet let's go,
(14:33):
and no one would do it. But it was kind
of that. It sounds cocky, but it was that confidence
in that belief. And I tell people we're gonna sell
out football stadiums, we're gonna take this all over the world.
And I tell because I believe in it. And so
if you want people to believe in it, you have
to be able to real have that conviction yourself. And
so that conviction has carried me. And then we say,
here's why we're gonna do it. We're gonna have no
ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. We're gonna
(14:54):
pay your taxes. There's gonna be no shipping fees. We're
gonna leave millions of dollars on the table. We're gonna
turn away ticket bro ers who have offered me over
a million dollars to get extra tickets. And I said
no immediately, because that is who we are, and that's
fans first. And when you share those stories over and
over again, people believe in it and they want to
jump on and make it happen. And that's what we've
seen happen.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It's just again, it's not it's not sports to me,
it's it's leadership in life. Let's bring in the pub
club one shot. Let's go to you cheats. We'll go
with you first, and we'll go to enjoying the show
so far. Yeah, all right, Joe T's locked in, Jesse.
So as long as you got Joe T locked in,
because you might not know this about Joe T, but
(15:35):
he's connected. So I don't know if a banana has
ever been whacked before, but Joe T knows how to
whack of banana. So cheats her up, buddy.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So I'm up first. I feel honored, Parney.
Speaker 6 (15:47):
It's a It's awesome that you mentioned Brandon as well,
because I was in Norfolk, Jess yesterday where the Crosby
family was honored for the Foster Yeah Cherry organization that
you do. I was completely blown away my first time
in Banana Ayan. One of the things that I wanted
to ask you, Jesse, and and just like hearing you talk,
(16:10):
I bet you that this is unintentional, like you probably
I don't even know if you register this, but one
of the things we do with the Black Baseball Mixtape
is to try to highlight diversity in the game. Brandon
we knew from from kind of hometown and we met
him and we flash Mitchell has come to the Richmond
area and done some charitable events. Todd Jackson, Jason Swan
(16:33):
on the Party Animals Prime who I met yesterday and done.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So what I was told, they were like cheats, what
you're doing.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
You have to come out to see this because not
only are we diverse on the field, but we have
about nine ish HBCU graduates on the field as well
that played HBCU baseball.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
What is it my question? I said, all that is
to ask.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
No one shot, bro one shot, But it's.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
So important to have diversity in the game. And you
represent what the bananas do, represent it all on the field,
off the field and so forth. Was that something that
was kind of that you were aware of or is
that just a core value of what the bananas are Jesse.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Well, I think, you know, you look at our past
and we learned a lot from the past, and you know,
we got compared to the Harlem Globe Trotters and we
are dramatically different than the Globetrotters. But I will say,
as someone who's done extensive research, what the Globe Trotters
did in the nineteen forties and fifties did. They fundamentally
changed the game of basketball, and they were the most
popular sports team in the world and sold seventy five
(17:41):
thousand tickets in Berlin. They beat the Lakers. They sold
Madison Square Garden now twice. Wilt Chamberlain chose to play
for the Globe Trotters before playing in the NBA.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
This is how.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Popular that team was. It was unbelievable. They changed the game,
and so we got so much inspiration from that. And
then you look at what the Negro leagues. You know,
we went to the Negro Leaguess Museum in Kansas City.
We took our whole team there and to see the
fun and the energy they brought to the game and
the trick plays and everything that they did. There's so
much unbelievable. And then the i mean the perseverance, you know,
(18:12):
to keep They were the first ones that invented lights. You know,
it wasn't Cincinnati, they were the ones that brought lights in.
The innovation that happened in the Negro Leagues and with
the Globe Trotters was second to none. And so for
us not to learn from some of the pioneers for
something people who have done some of the greatest things
in sports would be a huge miss. And so it
is completely it's intentional where we have our learnings. But
(18:33):
as far as great people, na, I mean they all
stand out. Flash has stood out since day one. I
mean he's the fastest man in baseball. But he's also
one of the greatest entertainers. All Right. You know Crosby
stood out in his tryout prime, blew us Away, Taj
and Swan, I mean the way they've grown and do
trick plays. And Swan is the most ripped man I've
ever seen a lie. So when he rips off his
shirt and he's got his six pack, has got his
(18:55):
own six pack, I mean, that is unbelievable. The showmanship.
And so I think it's the showmanship that we look for.
We're looking for the most talented and entertaining players in
the world and whoever that may be. And if we
can carry a little bit of legacy of the great
globetrotters that change the game and the great players from
the nee rulies to change the game, we hope we
can continue that.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Right. That's awesome. I mean that that I joke. I
joked about the question. Chief awesome question an awesome answer, which
brings me before we get to the MP, Jesse Cole,
Do you have a favorite trick play?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Because I have one.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I have one. Well, it's not a trick play, it's
a rule. But you go first, and I'll go after
you because we're hanging out in the bar right now.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Hanging on bar well with there's two things. So there's
the rules that that makes banable what it is. But
then I'm as excited about the trick plays. So so
the rules, you know, I know people love the fan
caught foul ball fornt out, it's great. I love batter
stealing first. But the rule we introduced this year is
going to change the game at some point, and that
is the Golden Batter rule. And so it's the idea
of your great best hitter can come up to bad
(20:00):
at any point in the game, at any time. So picture,
you know, back going the two thousand and four Red Sox,
Poppy comes up in the eighth inning, hits a home run,
but they're still down by one. He comes back up
in the ninth and gets another shot to hit. It's
the Mike trout for show. Heyo Tani World Baseball Classic.
That's that's one of my favorite favorite rules. But I'm
gonna I'm gonna go into the trick plays because this
(20:22):
has changed the game for us. Sorry, party, I'm taking
more into this bar. You know, you keep drinking. I'll
talk for a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Hey, why change now? This is forever and ever? Why
change now? I mean, remember when you came into Montgomery.
I was behind the bar. When you walked into the bar,
I was already back there.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yes, yeah, keep it, yes, yes exactly, you were going strong. Uh.
The backflip catch changed the game for us, So everyone
raises the bar. So Dr Meadows has done over fifty
backflip catches, but he did one in a game in
Savannah where he threw his glove and caught it bare
handed backflip, which is something like I don't know if
there's five people in the world that could do that.
So he's changed the game. From the outfield. Now they're
(21:01):
doing front flip catches, they're doing aerial catches, they're doing
tornadoes where they do a complete spin. And then Logan
Lacy has changed the game at third base because he's
doing this this ball where he can catch a ground
ball and do a jump up cartwheel and throw a
guy out in a cartwheel, and then sorry, last one,
I completely went over our first basement. Is now catching
the ball, a regular ball. He's catching his back or
(21:24):
catching above his head, which I know if this is
a podcast, you can't see anything what I just did.
But he's catching the ball over his head on a
ball thrown across. It's unbelievable. The trick plays, and having
almost fifteen a game is pretty pretty special. But I
want to hear yours.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, mine's the rule, and it was the fan catching
the foul ball because it happened in Montgomery, and I've
been doing this thirty five years, and I don't know
that I've ever seen a ballpark react when there was
a young kid that caught it. And you see it
all the time, Jesse, you probably remember this one. So
the kid caught it the place with nuts, and I
(21:59):
think it might even been the last out. And then
what really struck me, getting back to everybody's buy in
the party, animals and the bananas both ran up into
the stands, grabbed the kid, brought him down on the shoulders.
And you know, we always say in minor league baseball,
we're not in the baseball business. We're not in the
entertainment business. We're in the memory making business. People will
(22:20):
never forget that moment in Montgomery, Alabama where they knew
the kid or not. So that that to me. I
know that it's probably for you cliche. But the fan
catching fan catching the foul ball for and out is
my favorite rule that you have.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Make the fans the heroes. You know, at fifteen year
old caught a ball to win a game in North
Carolina and they did a whole front page story on
him in the paper the next day. I mean, that's
that's See, whenever we come up with something, we visualized
the perfect scenario, and it doesn't often happen, you know.
I mean when you know, I thought about the Living
Pinata promotion that we did where we put a person
in a costume and had kids hit them with many
(22:57):
bats while they threw canny in the air. Now that, hey,
there happened to me one night.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Now pass Jesse.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Hr disaster for us. But but the goal that you
think of what the perfect scenario is, and you know,
you hope you hit it, and that's what Obviously some
of those foul ball caught by fans have.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Been Yeah, that's really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
MP on the Mic.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas and Conversation on the
Pony Time podcast.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I'm here for the fashion conversation. We have a pants
mogul and now an underwear mogul. I mean, I got
my whole wardrobe right here. I love it. Uh, Jesse
you mentioned I mean now that you're big, you got
ticket brokers. I'm sure you got people who want to
franchise this all over the country. And now that it's big,
how do you manage the growth and keep it, keep
it your vision and not let it become, not let
(23:45):
it kaboom.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Well, this company's run by fans first and creative and
so creative drives everything. So what people don't realize is
that on every Tuesday, we go from ida session to
idea session to idea session. We have ott with our
creat team that's over the top ideas than we do
with our broadcast team. Then we do it with our
players than we do with our entertainment team. And so
that's five different idea meetings that we have and every Tuesday,
(24:09):
and that leads us to all new creative ideas every
single weekend. And that's why every night, we're doing ten
to fifteen things we've never done it before at a
baseball field. That's everything. And so that's why when people say, oh,
you're like the Globe Charts, I'm like, well, I appreciate it,
but they have the same show every night and the
Globe Charters. Our show is dramatically different every single night.
And that's why we have fans now travel around the country.
(24:29):
So when it looks to growth, my first mindset is,
all right, how can we keep the creative engine where
we're not burnt out, but we're driving it. And so
sometimes you have to push yourself to drive creative. So,
you know, major league stadiums, how do you make someone
sit sitting in you know, the upper deck in you know,
section four hundred and twenty two feel like they're a
part of it. I love that challenge because we'll make sure, Hey,
(24:50):
how do we have players go up there? How do
we have the band go up there? How do we
have Princess Potassia go up there? How do we get
our creative to create an experience up there? But yeah,
I mean I think it's it's it's very when I
look at the growth, I look at the game of
banana ball. And we aren't just trying to grow the
Savannah bananas. We're growing the game of banana ball. And
so how do you do that? Very well? Most teams,
most people when they start a league or a bunch
(25:11):
of owners get together, they say, all right, we're gonna
have eight teams, we're going to start a league. All right,
we're gonna get TV rights, we're gonna get a bunch
of sponsorship, and then we're going to try to sell tickets. No, no, no,
that's not how we look at things. We look at
how do you create fans first, then you have demand
that drives you to have to create more teams or
a league. So to give an example, the Party Animals
(25:32):
they started in twenty twenty. They now have more followers
than every Major League Baseball team. On TikTok they have
two million followers. They sold out their own headlining games
as past Yer twenty thousand tickets in Vegas in a
matter of minutes. Greenville, Greensboro, they sold out twelve games.
The Bananas weren't even involved. Okay, they're ready to have
their own headlining tour. The Firefighters they grewed almost five
hundred thousand followers. They have a big following now and
(25:54):
now they're going to develop their own headlining tour. Then
are we ready for a fourth team? And so we
make sure wherever we go they have fan base because
we don't have typical sponsorship. Our TV rights are done
in a completely different way than anyone else because now
we're doing it, there to have to be non exclusive.
Every game's on YouTube for free for our fans, so
enough to try to find where the game is or
find a paywall or can't get it. So we don't
(26:15):
take all the money that most leagues get from TV
rights or from sponsorship, and we pay all our fans
taxes and have no ticket fees, convenient fees and all that.
So we're leaving millions of dollars in the table. So
it's about fans first. So we will grow with more
teams and grow in areas that we know that, hey,
we're forced to do something for the fans because they've
demanded it before we say we're just gonna go jump.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Well, then here with the Party Time podcasts, I think
it's time for me to throw my hat into the ring.
I think that the fourth team should be the Parties
and we will wear these kind of pants.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, yeah, and shit, I'm just falling.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I'll go I'll be the manager if you want me to.
I'm Sumary time from the Squirrels, so I can go
be the manager. Right.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Well, I think you'd be a tremendous coach. I think
you'd be something party that there'd be a lot of
fun in that dugout.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
We're going to start to wind down here in a
little But I didn't. I wanted to tell you this story. Jesse.
You were you were recently in Buffalo not too long ago,
and a buddy of mine, who's one of the top
dogs at New Era, was at the game. Uh, and
he called me and he's like this, Jesse Cole, it's
like unbelievable party he goes. But for many, many years
(27:26):
you were the showmen of minor league baseball. Why didn't
you do something like that? And you want to said
to him, Jesse, you want to said to him, I
don't have the balls that Jesse Cole has. Right. So,
one of the things I talked about when I get
I talked to colleges and high schools is you know
about leadership is having the courage, courage, balls, whatever can
(27:49):
you just tell us a quick a quick story about that, like,
you know, do you you look back and reflect on
you know, I mean you told us today own party time,
all the stuff about you know, running out of money.
And I still don't know why Emily bought two twin
beds and not a king bed. But but wounds. We'll
talk about that later. But do you have a courageous
(28:11):
moment or a big ball moment that you want to
talk about.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
I like your language there, that's well situated for this.
I think you have to be willing to be misunderstood.
And if you're not getting criticized, you're playing it too safe.
And what I've learned from seeing I mean go back
to and I know I'm referencing him again, but Walt Disney.
I mean literally his dad said, you're going to fail
(28:36):
as an animator. You don't go into that. There's no
money in that. Everyone in Hollywood said snow White was
Disney's folly. It's going to fail. Even his brother and
his wife said, you're going to the theme park. Business
won't work. Look at all them. He was told every
step of the way on he's going to fail. He said,
it's not going to happen. It's not going to work.
And when we first came to Savannah, we were told
(28:58):
we were going to fail a college summer based team
which we started as before we went to professional and
when we first announced the team, we were told the
owners should be thrown out of town. You guys are
an embarrassment to the city. You'll never sell a ticket.
We actually saved all those and did a mean tweet
video on the year anniversary and half of them ended
up becoming ticket holders, which fun fact our first shipment
(29:19):
of banana shirts. There were too many ens on bananas.
We misspelled bananas on our first shipment of t shirts.
Our first game, we made every ticket all inclusive in
Savannah and we've done this since then. Every tick includes
all your Burger's hot dogs, chicken, sandwich, is, soda, water, popcorn, dessert,
everything for fifteen dollars. When we started, the line took
almost two and a half hours. People couldn't get food.
It was an absolute disaster. Then we set our first
(29:41):
ticket launch, which when we started creating Buzz, the whole
system shut down. Our first twenty four hour merch launch,
everything shut down. We did our Banana ball One City
World tour. We were told we'll never sell a ticket.
The first night we did it, the national anthem singer
showed up late, didn't get there on time, so we
had everyone try to sing. That went off terribly. The
sound broke down at the stadium. That didn't work. Then
(30:01):
we actually did our seven city world to our logistics.
One of our bar little trailers didn't make it. You know,
we didn't have a stuff didn't get there. We were
failing on our logistics. We have failed every step of
the way. Our first game in Buffalo on ESPN Primetime,
it didn't go off for the verse twelve minutes. The
anchor said, well, the Bananas can actually show the game
right now, so we'll just sit here and wait and
see if they're able to figure it out.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
We have failed every step of the way, and we've
told we were going to fail. When we left Coastal
Plainly Traditional Baseball to go to Bananabal, they said, this
is Jesse's joke. They will fail immediately. They're going to
be begging for money and begging for tickets. I have
saved a lot of those comments, and I don't look
for that really Esprine's inspiration, but I look at it
and say, all right, you're going to be doubted every
step of the way, and you're not thinking big enough
(30:45):
if you're not getting doubted, because it's the people that
don't get criticized, the people that aren't doing anything. So
I know whenever we do something take another level. If
we go to this next wave playing front one hundred
thousand fans in one night, two hundred thousand fans, we
try to break a record, people are going to say
it's terrible and you're going to fail. That fires me
up because that means we're thinking big and we're dreaming big.
And I want our people to know that, Hey, don't
focus on what couldn't be, focused on what should be,
(31:07):
don't focus the way it was, focus the way it
could be. And I just I get excited about that stuff.
So I share that with our team. And I don't
have a specific big ball story like you want, but
I'll tell you every step of the way, we are
told we are going to fail and it won't work,
and I think that's just part of the journey.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I've been nodding my head the whole show. Like you said, Jesse,
people can't see it. It's a podcast but when you
started telling that story, and Michael Phillips was a sports
writer in town when we moved here and Chets you
probably remember this too. The day we named the team
the Richmond Flying Squirrels, Jesse, you would have thought that
I had committed a federal crime. Like people were like,
(31:45):
wherever this ass came from, lit's send him back because
this is ridiculous. I'm embarrassed for our city. And I
just kept saying to people, give us a chance. We
know what we're doing, Like your kids are going to
love us, your kids are going to love Natzie of
us a chance. And now hopefully Cheats and Michael Phillips
would agree with this. I can't imagine Richmond, Virginia without
(32:07):
the Richmond Flying Squirrels being the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Guys, do you agree with or disagree with that?
Speaker 4 (32:15):
The go.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Joe t out on the Banana tour? Sometimes I wouldn't
let party.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I will say one known on that what happened is
no one has experienced him. So if you're just talk
you know, everyone talks and talks and talks and they
say they're gonna doing I'm I'm accused of that as well.
But then we try to back it up, and you
backed it up. If you were like another minor league
team that just didn't go about doing things differently, they
might have been right, but they backed it up. And
I think that's what it is. It's all comes down
to the experience, and you have to deliver on that experience.
(32:45):
And you did that. And that's why I love that challenge.
I love saying we're going to do this and people
are saying, oh, that might not work. I'm like, let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Let's go and look, I know, like like you mentioned
some failures along the way. I mean, I've had plenty
of promotional fellows throughout my career, like a shot not
taken as a shot missed. Right. I'm well, let each
guy give one more quick thing and then we're going
to wrap it up. But I want to ask you
one question myself. Every not every show, but most of
(33:11):
the shows you bring back a former major league player,
Bill Spacemanale, who I've worked with, was maybe the first
one you introduced me, and your wife introduced me to
Jake Peevey uh, and I feel like he and I
are brothers from a different mother, and like, like now
me and Peeve are cool, right, Is there a person
that you haven't had yet play for the Bananas that
(33:35):
you want to play for the Bananas.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
It's a good question. And being from Boston, obviously I
have the great memories of with the Red Sox, and
you know, I do think about Ortiz, I think about Pedro,
you know, I think about some of those guys that
truly had fun on the field. Even Manny being Nanny
would be perfect, and uh with with the with the Bananas.
But no, I mean I never thought John Cena would
(34:00):
play for us. I mean the people that end up
showing up and reaching out to us, that want to
be a part of it is special. So it's not
something I think about. I will say I see a
world in the next few years where a lot of
former MLB guys literally right and they're just finishing their career,
are going to start reaching out because what I watched,
(34:20):
as you know, Corey Kluber pitch for US a couple
of weeks ago, and two times, say young one Winter
and his family his kids got to watch him play.
And I watched Shane Victorino, another World Series champion, his
kids never got to see him playing, and got a
walk off with us, and I see the response of
their kids, and they're playing in front of a sold
out stadium and they don't have the pressure of the
fans and the contract and everything. They can go out
and have fun. And when we started playing the game
(34:42):
as kids, that's why we played the game. And so
my dream with all of this is all the former
MLB players that they gave so much to the game
that they can go on on a farewell tour with
us at sold out major league stadiums and tip their
hat to their fans and the fans can give it
back to them and have those special moments. Jason and
have said that to me. In the last game in
Cleveland he retired in twenty twenty, he didn't get to
(35:04):
have a moment in front of any fans. There were
no fans in the stands. And when we introduced him,
you know, obviously an All Star, huge fan favorite in Cleveland,
you could see the emotion in his face as he
tipped his hat. He's like, this is a moment that
means more than you know. And I felt so proud
to be a little part of that, to give that.
So I think in the next few years you're going
to see a lot of those moments, and I'm just
(35:25):
so glad we created something necking to create those. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
No, I think it's really cool.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Cheats party shot, partying shot.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
I'll just say this, the it's amazing hearing you recount
people doubting your vision, people doubting like you're the people
that you looked up to, like Walt Disney. I had
a very fun moment at the Bananas game with my
with my son who Parney, you know, Cam, and my
niece Maddie. They were waiting in a very long coach
(35:58):
rack line and I told them, hey, kids, this is
this probably isn't gonna happen because they've they've got to go,
they got to move and so forth. And they looked
at me and said, oh man, you're doubting us, but
we're gonna do it. So turns out they actually did
cut the line and they go they go to the
stage to do the final wrap ups, and a coach
(36:20):
rack sees my son and my niece and just and
COEs over and signs everything they needed to sign and
go up. And my kids looked at my family looked
at me and goes, you doubted me, Dad, But we
gotta go it.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So I just wanted to like those moments like that
with all of.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
Your players and the fact that you know, the little
young people, my son's nine was able to have those
moments and then look at me and they busted my
child for two hours on the drive back to Richmond,
saying you doubted us. He said, we couldn't do it,
but they did it. So that's all I wanted to
leave you, Jesse. With Jess, the way that you're inspiring
young people is pretty awesome.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Thank you. Find a way. They're gonna be very successful
when they get olders.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Find a way, kid, I promise it, Cam is going
to be very successful. MPO the Mike parting shot for
Jesse Cole, Buddy.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
What's the change you're proudest of that's not in baseball
related that you've brought to the world in baseball?
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Good question. The change that I'm most proud of? You know,
I think about our people. I think about what we
just referenced here. You know about the moment with Brandon
Crosby and his family. You know it's twenty twenty that
my wife, who's got one of the biggest hearts I've
ever I could never imagine anybody. She said, Jesse, you
(37:33):
know there's four hundred thousand kids in the US right
now who don't have a permanent home in foster care.
And I said, that's unbelievable. She goes, we have to
do something. In the middle of COVID, we got licensed,
we became foster parents, and so we took in a
two and a half year old girl that was having
some serious challenges, and then a couple months later took
in a six day old who was in the nick
to you, battling drug addiction. And those two girls we
(37:55):
ended up adopting in January. But what we saw is
there's something that we can do that's bigger, and we
came up with the idea of launching the nonprofit Bananas Foster,
and every night at every stadium we go to we
honor a family that's probably never got recognized in front
of people before, about a family that maybe has had
twenty kids come in their home, they've adopted four kids,
(38:17):
they've made such an impact, their heroes. And to see
the whole stadium stand and to see the emotions in
that moment, I think it's shown our people that you know,
there are so many amazing things that you can do
in this world. It's not just baseball. It's about bringing
people together. It's about caring, and it's about doing the
right thing and even when it's hard, because foster family
(38:38):
is one of the hardest things to do, and yet
every day we're finding out more people are signing up
for foster families. We're hearing it with Bananas foster and
I told I tell everyone this, you know, when we
only sold two tickets, I told people, I go, we're
going to sell out games at some point and we're
eventually gonna have a wait list to buy tickets. And
people look to be like I was crazy. And now
is the weight list approaches three million for tickets to
go to the Bananas game. I'm telling people, I don't know,
(38:59):
it's me ten years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years,
or a hundred years, but we're eventually going to have
a waitless in this country of families that are signing
up to be foster families, and we're going to make
it happen. And I believe in it, and I think
that's what I hope that we can show anyone that
anything can be accomplished when you dream it when you
believe in it and you go after it.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Well, what a way to conclude, because that's the most
meaningful thing, and I was going to bring it up.
I'm glad that you got that in there with mp
A Banana s Foster if there we can do anything
here in my league Baseball to tell because I know
our family has been touched with the fostering world. So
(39:39):
I think that's great. And you guys have just done
an amazing job in so many levels. And I think
that that last thing that you talked about and fower you,
I think that that's one of the things I'd want
to be remembered for, right, Like and you know me
and my pants have done the same thing, like the pants,
(40:01):
the pants or what make people rich and recognize me.
But I'm able to do some really impactful things because
I'm Parny pants, right And this is the last thing
I want to ask you, because people ask me this
every single day. Party Do you ever get tired of
wearing party pants? Jesse Cole? Do you ever get tired
of wearing a yellow suit and the yellow top hat.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I have more than nine of these. I wear them
every single day. This is who I am. This is
what I stand for, it's what I believe, and I
do not get tired one bit me too.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Great way to end it, guys, Thank you for being here.
Parney Pup Club Jesse Cole ending number seven of Party
Time is down. Joe t Oh Yeah, Joe T. Joe
Ta Jesse Cale you got three Joe t Hell Yes, buddy.
Thanks for joining us on the Party Time Podcast. Tell
your friends, tell your family, tell people you love hell
(40:52):
I don't care even tell people you don't like about
the Party Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Parny from
the Party Time Podcast asking you to follow, subscribe, follow
us on all your social media outlets, join the Party
Time family because you never know what's gonna happen on
the Partie Time Podcast
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