Savannah Bananas will be joined by 5 barnstorming teams in 2026 as Banana Ball continues to grow

Banana Ball continues to grow.

The Savannah Bananas remain the nameplate for the barnstorming style of rollicking entertainment, but on Thursday night founder Jessie Cole announced more growth for his brand of baseball hijinks.

Cole said the Savannah Bananas will be joined by five teams in a new league in 2026 that has scheduled appearances in 75 stadiums in 45 states. Cole said Banana Ball drew 2.2 million fans this year and he hopes that number grows to 3.3 million in 2026.

Cole said Banana Ball will be played in 14 major league parks and 10 football stadiums, including two NFL sites — the Superdome in New Orleans and Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. The new Banana Ball Championship League will include visits to such college football venues as Tennessee's Neyland Stadium and Texas A&M's Kyle Field.

“To see the response from fans all across the country, I don’t think anyone could have imagined this,” Cole told The Associated Press on Thursday, adding he only sold “a handful of tickets” when the Savannah Bananas were founded in 2016.

In 2023, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, opened an exhibit for the Savannah Bananas. The exhibit was recognition of Cole's success attracting younger fans with shenanigans such as a player on stilts and outs being counted when a fan catches a foul ball in the stands.

Two new teams will be added in 2026 — the beach-themed Loco Beach Coconuts and the Indianapolis Clowns, a tribute to the original barnstorming team that inspired Cole.

The new league is adding new “Primetime Coach” positions which will be manned by two former major league players on the new teams — Shane Victorino on Loco Beach and Ryan Howard on Indianapolis.

“Getting the opportunity to coach a Banana Ball team that’s paying tribute to the Negro Leagues? That’s an honor, straight up,” Howard said in a statement released by the league. "The names that came before us — Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell — those legends paved the way. They played the game with style, with soul, with swagger.

“Banana Ball is all about energy, entertainment, flipping the script, and you know what? That’s exactly what the Negro Leagues brought to the game from day one.”

The other teams in the league are the Party Animals, Fire Fighters and Texas Tailgaters.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

FILE - Savannah Bananas' Dakota "Stilts" Albritton pitches against the Firefighters during their "Banana Ball World Tour," Sept. 19, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

FILE - The Savannah Bananas do a kick line before their game against the Firefighters during their "Banana Ball World Tour," Sept. 19, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A Guatemalan man pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to a felony offense and acknowledged his involvement in an attempt to illegally smuggle migrants to the U.S. when a jampacked tractor-tailer truck crashed in Mexico in 2021, killing more than 50 migrants.

Daniel Zavala Ramos, 42, faces a possible sentence of life in prison following his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Laredo, Texas, to a single charge of conspiring to bring migrants without documents from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. and placing lives in jeopardy and causing serious injury and deaths, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Sentencing is set for July 7.

Ramos was among six Guatemalans charged over the crash of the semitrailer truck and the first to be convicted. The other five have a final pretrial conference on June 3, according to court records. Ramos' attorney did not immediately return an email Wednesday evening seeking comment.

At least 160 migrants, many from Guatemala, were packed into the truck that hit the support base for a pedestrian bridge on Dec. 9, 2021, and overturned, authorities said. At least 53 people were killed and more than 100 were injured, officials said, and video footage at the time of the crash showed dead and injured migrants in a jumbled pile inside the truck's collapsed freight container.

The Justice Department statement said the dead included unaccompanied children.

The crash occurred on a highway leading toward the Chiapas state capital, some 160 miles (260 kilometers) from Mexico's border with Guatemala and about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) south of the Mexican border with Texas.

Authorities announced the arrests of Ramos and the five other defendants in Guatemala and Texas in 2024, on the third anniversary of the accident. Ramos was extradited in 2025 from Guatemala to face charges, the DOJ statement said.

Prosecutors said the Guatemalans conspired to smuggle migrants from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for payment. In cases of unaccompanied children being smuggled, the defendants would provide scripts of what to say if they were apprehended, authorities said.

The smugglers would move migrants on foot, inside microbuses, cattle trucks and tractor trailers and use Facebook Messenger to request and deliver identification documents to the migrants to get them into the U.S., according to authorities.

FILE - Bodies in bags sit on the side of the road after a deadly semi-trailer truck crash in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, Mexico, Dec. 9, 2021. (AP Photo, File)