Brothers and sisters,
Last week, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to answer a simple question: can a banana play baseball?
Jokes aside, last week I went to D.C. to attend a Savannah Bananas baseball game with friends. The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition baseball team that travels around the country and plays a different kind of baseball in various stadiums. Basically, they’re like the Harlem Globetrotters, but baseball. The Bananas play against other exhibition teams and place a heavy emphasis on entertainment. For example, the first out of our game was a pop-fly to left field. So, the outfielder just put his glove up and caught the ball, right? Not this guy. He caught the ball mid-backflip and did a “superhero landing”. Beyond that, there were dance numbers, a toddler race, a pitcher on stilts, and more!
But there’s one thing the Bananas emphasize above all else—the fan experience. Banana Ball (the version of baseball they play) is focused on making sure fans never get bored. There’s a two-hour time limit—no 12-hour, 24 inning games here! Bunting is outlawed (you’ll be thrown out of the game if you bunt). Walks are wacky (after ball four, every player on the team must touch the ball). And if a fan in the stands catches a foul ball, it counts as an out! The team will go into the crowd during games to celebrate with the fans and sometimes a fan will be brought out onto the field to participate in the shenanigans. But one other thing caught my attention about their love for their fans.
Scrolling through Instagram after the game, I saw a video on how to try out for the team. They emphasize four major things with the first three being pretty obvious: high-level baseball experience, entertainment ability, and social media presence. But the fourth I appreciated. In the video they say, “The name of the organization is Fans First Entertainment. That means you will never big league a kid who wants your autograph, you will always put the fans first, and you will always be a good teammate.” I mention that because I appreciate the humility the Bananas project. In less than ten years, they’ve become this phenomenon with appearances on SportsCenter, games on ESPN, and sold out stadiums all over the country (they sold out Bank of America Stadium, where the Panthers play, twice—meaning 150,000 people over two nights!). And yet, the philosophy is still, “Fans first.” We heard that a lot last Saturday—how grateful they were, how much they appreciated us being there—and it shows.
Humility is something that we Christians ought to know something about. It is a major point in our theology and our understanding of our relationship with God. We believe that we ought to be humble in the presence of the Lord, acknowledging our dependence on God for all things. We ought to be humble in the presence of other people, believing that they have some-thing to teach us, some gift to give us. We believe that we are saved because Christ himself, God in the Flesh, was willing to humble himself enough to come to earth, live among us, suffer death on a cross, and still seek redemption and reconciliation for all of us. To be Christian is to be humble. It is to think of the needs of others first and figure out what we can do to meet those needs. All of it in the service of our God, who loves us more deeply than we could ever imagine.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben