By Mike Hlas

IOWA CITY — Those who are baseball-purists, whatever that means, may look upon the Savannah Bananas with scorn.

Then there’s most of the rest of us, who appreciate an entertainment extravaganza that fully is family-friendly and goes the extra 60 feet, 6 inches to give its customers an enjoyable night out.

In addition to being a football fortress for nearly a century, Kinnick Stadium has been used in recent years for unique college wrestling and basketball events. Friday and Saturday nights, however, were something else. The Bananas and their opponents, the Firefighters, filled the old brick house for baseball. Or, more specifically, Banana Ball.

It almost has to be seen to be described. It’s a mix of baseball, gymnastics, music, dance routines, comedy, a few moments meant to tug hearts, and surprise guests. It’s an enormous party, it’s G-rated fun with nary an inappropriate word uttered, and it’s found an amazingly large and loyal fan base in a decade’s time.

Like they do everywhere else in Major League Baseball venues and everywhere else they go, the Bananas sold out Kinnick. Both nights. That’s roughly 137,000 tickets. Their starting price was $35, and went all the way up $175 for club seating. To sit one row from the top of the stadium set me back $120 for two seats.

By the way, Kinnick’s seats are still too small and I have no idea how people find it enjoyable to sit for almost four hours at football games so crammed together. Especially if you’re not near an aisle and have people crawling over you to get in and out. Double-especially if it’s a September game played under a big hard sun beating on the big people in the big hard world.

I also, admittedly, have lived a life of covering games from press boxes.

Anyway, Friday night’s game was delayed for two hours because of rain, but the show still went on. I attended Saturday’s game as a paid customer, strictly out of the curiosity of witnessing a phenomenon.

The experience was a bit mind-boggling and a bit comforting. The first part came from seeing 68,000 people not only embracing the event, but singing and chanting along with a large number wearing Bananas shirts and caps. The merchandise stations outside the stadium were multiple and with long lines, but many of the spectators showed up at Kinnick already in possession of Bananas garb.

The comforting came from seeing so many people gather in one place to simply have fun, grinning and laughing out loud, not frothing at the mouth at referees or opponents. It also came from seeing so many families at Kinnick for something, people who probably wouldn’t be bringing kids of 6 or 8 or 12 or even themselves to a Hawkeyes football game.

I’ve always said I’m all for anarchy in which no one gets hurt. That’s Banana Ball. It makes “scripted chaos” a reality instead of an oxymoron.s league that has its players wear uniforms, but allows those players to include their own individual touches.

The Bananas’ starting pitcher Saturday wore a yellow cowboy hat. Another player wore a cape. Another was on stilts. Yes, a baseball player can pitch and hit, and even beat out a grounder for an infield hit.

Give me an umpire who dances to “La Bamba” between pitches or does a flip after calling a baserunner out.

Give me a version of baseball in which a walk is replaced by a sprint, in which bunting is illegal, in which pitchers waste no time between pitches and batters aren’t allowed to step out of the batter’s box to waste even more time. Give me a two-hour time limit for a baseball game with every moment of the two hours used for something. Especially the time between half-innings.

Give me former Iowa NCAA wrestling all-time great Spencer Lee, a 125-pounder, coming onto the field between innings to throw around a 205-pound muscleman who plays for the Firefighters.

I even liked most of the nonstop music that went on during the game. If you’re like me and don’t like country music, just wait 15 seconds or so and you’ll get something else, followed by something else, followed by something else. It was unusual to hear Iowa State staple “Sweet Caroline” sung along to by a Kinnick crowd, and my ISU-graduate wife said it was sacrilegieous.

I’ve heard the Chicken Dance played between innings at professional baseball games. I hadn’t seen the players join the fans in acting it out.

As for people who also expect some baseball, the players aren’t major-league quality but do have collegiate and even professional experience. They’re legitimately slick fielders and have pop in their bats. And when have you ever seen a major-league second baseman record an out by firing the ball behind his back to the first baseman after fielding a bouncer?

Trick plays like that are rewarded on the scoreboard, as Abner Doubleday surely would have wanted.

Not having to battle Friday’s rain, I had a favorable experience and I don’t need or want to have it a second time. If I had a 10-year-old child or grandchild, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to another Bananas game if I could secure tickets. Because the kids who helped fill Kinnick were having a great time and never seem the least bit bored, and their parents appeared to feel the same way.