The Savannah Bananas show us that sport’s future may not look like sport | Jonathan Liew

As sport is gradually supplanted by scripted entertainment, it is starting to resemble something else entirely

The pitcher walks back to the mound, ball sheathed in his right hand, quietly contemplating his next move. Sixty feet away, the batter raises and cocks his bat in anticipation. Then the pitcher slowly removes his shirt, flings his glove and cap to one side and launches into a sexy rendition of a Celine Dion song, while his teammates gather in formation around him and wave flares. Behind home plate, the umpire is enthusiastically twerking.

The Savannah Bananas were born a decade ago, when a former pitcher called Jesse Cole was coaching a team in the Cape Cod league for the summer and realised that the game he was watching was boring him to tears. So he bought a small team in Savannah, renamed it the Bananas, put on a yellow tuxedo, hired a group of elderly cheerleaders named the Banana Nanas, and thus was built a sensation that in a few short years has begun to change the way people think about sport.

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