Banana Ball is doing it right

Throughout the spring and summer, I have often used my column to rant about the issues I see with changing baseball, a game that has been played for hundreds of years.
While I stand by all my comments about making too many changes to the sport, this past weekend has taught me there is room for an alternative.
A few months ago, my sister-in-law asked if we could enter the lottery to purchase Banana Ball tickets. CHS Field, the home of the St. Paul Saints and Hamline University baseball teams, was hosting the Party Animals versus the Texas Tailgaters.
We entered the lottery, and for the price of $35 each, we were able to purchase tickets for myself, my wife, my sister-in-law, and her boyfriend.
I had no idea what to expect. I have seen some videos in passing, but as my wife says, you can’t go wrong hanging out with friends and family.
My sister-in-law was coming from southeast Minnesota, and was running late, so my wife and I got some lunch in downtown St. Paul.
I looked up, and of course, the Savannah Bananas, the original Banana Ball team, was playing on ESPN.
We sat and watched, and quickly I realized that despite being ridiculous, this was going to be the best entertainment I had all weekend.
This isn’t normal baseball, and in fact, it’s not its Banana Ball, as we were told throughout the game.
For those who haven’t seen the videos, players dance and sing, and it’s a fan-first, exhibition-style game.
One of the interesting things I found is that they have a time limit. After two hours, a new inning can’t begin.
I am a purist when it comes to America’s pastime and don’t think they should make a time limit in professional baseball, but I can see the appeal for this type of sport.
Another fascinating thing I found was that you can’t bunt, and if you do, you are automatically ejected from the game.
For regular baseball, I love “small ball,” where hitters move runners over, managers make strategic decisions, and so on. But in a Banana Ball game, I can see the appeal of not wanting to have it.
The scoring mechanism was also fascinating to me. Each inning, the team with the most runs gets a point. But in the ninth inning, all runs count, so if a team scores five points throughout the game for example, but their opponent scores six runs in the bottom of the ninth, they still lose.
From my understanding this was designed to keep games competitive, which makes sense.
I was at the Red Sox versus Twins game last Wednesday, the afternoon game before the Twins traded away most of their team (I feel bad for Twins fans), and by the ninth inning, they had position players pitching.
Banana Ball aims to avoid teams running up the score, and I respect that.
Overall, I am excited to get to my next game, and in the meantime, I will likely enjoy cheap tickets at Target Field the rest of the season.