Busch Stadium sells out twice this weekend, and not for the Cardinals.
The Savannah Bananas play the Loco Beach Coconuts at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday night, with more than 46,000 expected both times. Tickets are gone. The good news is you can watch the whole thing for free anyway.
HOW TO WATCH FROM HOME
Both games stream free on the Savannah Bananas' official YouTube channel. Broadcasts begin around 7 p.m. CT Friday and Saturday. No subscription, no cable, no login.
They are also carried on the ESPN App and Disney+, and ESPN2 has the linear broadcast for Saturday night.
If you did not get tickets, you are not shut out. This is one of the few sold-out events in American sports you can watch for free, legally, on your phone.
HOW TO ATTEND
Dates: Friday, Aug. 21 and Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026
Game time: 7 p.m. CT both nights
Venue: Busch Stadium, 700 Clark Ave., St. Louis, MO 63102
Matchup: Savannah Bananas vs. Loco Beach Coconuts
Run of show, identical both nights:
2 p.m. — Pre-Game Plaza opens, player appearances begin
3 p.m. — "Before the Peel" pregame show at Together Credit Union Plaza
4:30 p.m. — Gates open
6:30 p.m. — Show starts
7 p.m. — First pitch
Do not show up at 6:55. The plaza opens five hours before first pitch and the pregame is a real production, not people standing around. "Before the Peel" is free if you already have a game ticket. Players from both teams appear at it.
TICKETS
Sold out through the Bananas' own site. Both nights are expected at full capacity, north of 46,000.
The Cardinals still have all-inclusive packages listed, though the price has moved considerably: those started at $99 for Friday and $125 for Saturday back in January and are now listed around $375 and $350. Resale exists on Ticketmaster, StubHub and SeatGeek, and the Bananas warn regularly that third-party listings can be fraudulent. Buy carefully.
BAG POLICY
Standard Busch Stadium rules. No special Banana Ball exceptions.
Bags, purses and soft-sided coolers are permitted up to 10 by 8 by 10 inches. Strollers are fine. Everything is subject to inspection.
The rule that catches people: there is no re-entry. Once your ticket is scanned you are in for the night. Do the plaza first, then go through the gate.
PARKING AND TRANSIT
Lots along Sixth Street run around $10 on a normal night and downtown traffic is rarely the problem out-of-town guides make it out to be. Just know this is a 46,000 sellout with the plaza filling from 2 p.m., so the cheap spots go earlier than they would for a Tuesday against the Reds. Ballpark Village will be gone; the Starr lot under Interstate 64 along Seventh and the garages near Kiener Plaza and Union Station are the fallbacks.
MetroLink and more than a dozen MetroBus routes serve downtown, and the train will be full of people in banana costumes, which some would call a feature.
Rideshare drop-off and pickup: east side on Broadway near Spruce Street, west side on Spruce near the Westin.
FOOD AND DRINK
Four items exist only for these two nights.
Banana Beer, brewed with ripe bananas — Markets 108, 153 and 451, plus vending locations
Savannah Bananas Donuts, iced and topped with banana candies — Section 153, Dingers Donuts
Split's Nachos Supreme, with banana peppers — Sections 139, 161, 169, 233, 248, 252, 266, 437, 450
32 oz. souvenir soda cup — most of the ballpark
Cardinals Nation is running a separate ticketed pregame party from 2 to 4:30 both days in the Hall of Fame Club, second floor — buffet, full bar, DJ. That ticket does not include admission to the game. Read that twice before buying one.
WHAT BANANA BALL ACTUALLY IS
Eleven rules, and the first one is the one everybody misunderstands.
You do not win by scoring the most runs. Each inning is worth one point, awarded to whoever scores more runs in that inning. Win the inning, get the point. The exception is the final inning, where every run counts.
The rest:
Two-hour time limit; no new inning starts after it. Step out of the box and it's a strike. Bunt and you are ejected from the game. Batters can steal first base on any pitch. There are no walks — ball four turns into a sprint where every defender must touch the ball while the hitter runs as far as he dares. No mound visits, ever. If a fan cleanly catches a foul ball, the batter is out. Each team gets one challenge, thrown onto the field as a physical prop, and the fans elect a representative who gets one challenge of their own, signaled with a confetti cannon.
There is a Golden Batter rule, letting a team send any hitter to the plate once per game regardless of the order. There is a Trick Play Equalizer Point for the visitors if they out-trick the home team. There is a designated runner and a designated fielder as actual roster positions. Ties go to a Showdown — one hitter against a pitcher, catcher and a single fielder, then just pitcher and catcher, then bases loaded. A home run over the wall ends it on the spot.
WHO IS PLAYING
The Bananas: Bill LeRoy and Kyle Luigs are the co-captains, both around since the 2021 Coastal Plain League title team. Dakota "Stilts" Albritton is the one you cannot miss. Jackson Olson and KJ Jackson are among the most-followed players in the league. Alex Ziegler holds several world records and has been photographed balancing a banana on his nose in a major league dugout.
Kelsie Whitmore, a right-handed pitcher, is on the active roster. Jesse Cole, the founder, works the whole thing in a yellow tuxedo and reliably stays afterward to sign autographs.
The one to watch in the outfield is RobertAnthony Cruz, No. 15, known as RAC. A former competitive gymnast, he catches fly balls while executing a mid-air backflip, and has landed them at Petco Park, Citizens Bank Park and the Superdome. He also has a signature tumbling play he calls the Iron Lotus, and a genuinely painful live-television wipeout on CNN that went around the internet.
That is not just showing off. Under the rules, a trick play — a routine play made in a non-routine way that still records an out — is a scored element. If the visitors log more trick plays than the home team heading into the final inning, they get the Trick Play Equalizer Point. RAC flipping into a catch is worth something on the scoreboard.
The Coconuts are new — the fifth franchise in the Banana Ball Championship League, playing their first season. Head coach Mark Crocco spent eight years building Erskine College into a Division II power, more than 225 wins and seven straight winning seasons, after Division I stops at Presbyterian and the Air Force Academy.
Their roster carries 24, including catcher Erik Ostberg and a listed "designated dancer and entertainment specialist" in Armani Henderson, No. 3, who goes by Papi Plátano and has north of 70,000 followers of his own. Dominican and Italian flags in his bio; based out of Rhode Island.
And their Primetime Coach is Shane Victorino.
The Flyin' Hawaiian. Two World Series rings, two All-Star selections, four Gold Gloves, and one of the more genuinely beloved postseason performers of his era. He won a title in Philadelphia in 2008 and another in Boston in 2013.
Which is its own small joke, because while the Bananas are selling out Busch this weekend, the Cardinals are in Philadelphia.
THE ST. LOUIS ANGLE
Noah Niznik is back. The left-handed pitcher, No. 88, hometown Imperial, Missouri, by way of St. John Vianney and Southeast Missouri State, is the only Missourian on the Bananas roster.
Last year he pitched at Busch and then did a dance routine to Nelly's "Country Grammar" — his idea. He said afterward he wanted them to do something for his hometown, and that he likes the extra pressure of playing in front of people he knows.
The Coconuts have a Missouri guy too. Gideon Antle, outfielder, grew up in Licking, about two hours south.
WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME
The Bananas' Busch debut was July 18-19, 2025, against the Party Animals. It sold out both nights. Fans came from 45 states, plus Hawaii and Canada. People started lining up on the Eighth Street sidewalk more than 24 hours early for the merchandise tents.
Adam Wainwright pitched. He came out in the seventh in Banana yellow wearing his No. 50, got a standing ovation, gave up a hit and retired the last batter of the inning. He had been scheduled for the rained-out April date and had gotten so serious about preparing that he partially tore his rotator cuff doing it. He described the atmosphere as somewhere between a playoff game and a WWE match, and said he appreciated that it was a show. Jason Isringhausen and Lance Lynn appeared too.
There was a marriage proposal mid-game. She said yes.
Whether any Cardinals alumni turn up this weekend has not been announced. Watch the seventh.
THE PART ST. LOUIS DOESN'T LOVE DISCUSSING
Busch Stadium has three non-Cardinals events on its 2026 calendar. All three are inside a 20-day window: Noah Kahan on Aug. 2, Guns N' Roses with Public Enemy on Aug. 16, and these two nights.
In 2018 the building hosted five — Kenny Chesney, a Spartan Race, Journey and Def Leppard, Luke Bryan and Sam Hunt, and Ed Sheeran in September. It has since had Post Malone and Jelly Roll, Billy Joel and Sting, Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Mötley Crüe. It has hosted the U.S. men's national soccer team against Uruguay and the women's team against New Zealand.
Fewer outside events now, and more riding on each one.
Meanwhile the actual tenants are 65-63, third in the Central, 13.5 games back, and have not led the division for a single day this season. They will draw 46,000-plus on Friday and Saturday for a team from Georgia.
A ballpark is a business. When the club is not selling, the building sells everything else, and a barnstorming exhibition with 300 million TikTok views is no longer a novelty line item. It is a load-bearing one.
"IT'S JUST NOT FOR ME"
The objection arrives on schedule, usually from someone who has watched baseball for forty years and finds the dancing unbearable. That is a legitimate preference and nobody has to enjoy this.
But it gets delivered like it settles something, and it doesn't. The Bananas are not competing with the Cardinals for the same customer. They are pulling families, kids, and people who were never going to sit through nine innings anyway. In July the team performed at the ESPY Awards at Lincoln Center — the actual ESPYs, in the David H. Koch Theater, which is not a place minor league baseball novelty acts usually turn up.
Baseball spent twenty years fretting about pace of play and losing young audiences. A man in a yellow tuxedo fixed both by throwing out the rulebook, and now he sells out major league stadiums on back-to-back nights and gets booked at Lincoln Center. Rolling your eyes at it is allowed. Pretending it means nothing is not.
Gates at 4:30. Show at 6:30. Free on YouTube if you're not going.