{"id":2487876,"date":"2026-07-04T11:58:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2487876"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:58:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:58:46","slug":"savannah-bananas-bring-energy-to-kinnick-ahead-of-the-first-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/savannah-bananas-bring-energy-to-kinnick-ahead-of-the-first-pitch\/","title":{"rendered":"Savannah Bananas bring energy to Kinnick ahead of the first pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On a typical game day in Iowa City, nearby Kinnick Stadium is swallowed by a sea of black and gold, but on Friday, July 3, a different color took over: banana yellow.<\/p>\n\n

The party ahead of the Savannah Bananas\u2019 first stop of the weekend at Kinnick, a part of the Banana Ball, started well before the game. Fans braved the humid 90-degree day for the preshow of the exhibition baseball team, fondly called \u201cBefore the Peel.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 3,000 fans packed the Evashevski Drive side of Kinnick Stadium for the preshow event, which featured a romp of entertainment from the Savannah Bananas spirit squad, entering a round of friendly competition with the challenging team, The Firefighters\u2019 spirit squad.<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>Kinnick Stadium hosts Banana Ball July 3\u20114 with all-day fan events<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Leading the crowd in chants and cheers along with singing and dancing to popular hype songs like the Village People\u2019s \u201cYMCA,\u201d Miley Cyrus\u2019s \u201cParty in the USA,\u201d fitting for the Fourth of July holiday, and \u201cSweet Caroline\u201d by Neil Diamond, replaced the \u201cdun dun dun\u201d ad lib with \u201cbanana.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

More: <\/strong>Caitlin Clark OUT with back injury for Indiana Fever game Sunday<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Before welcoming the marching band and the players for both teams to the stage for one last hype moment before the gates for the game opened.<\/p>\n

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The Friday game will stream on the Savannah Bananas’ YouTube channel<\/a> and will also air on truTV at 7 p.m. CT.<\/p>\n

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In addition to the Savannah Bananas YouTube channel, the July 4 game will air at 7 p.m. CT on the Roku Sports Channel.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jessica Rish is an entertainment, dining and education reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. She can be reached at <\/em>JRish@press-citizen.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at <\/em>@rishjessica_<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.press-citizen.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a typical game day in Iowa City, nearby Kinnick Stadium is swallowed by a sea of black and gold, but on Friday, July 3, a different color took over: banana yellow. The party ahead of the Savannah Bananas\u2019 first stop of the weekend at Kinnick, a part of the Banana Ball, started well before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2487877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[39915,28769,22220,464284,21849,22036,489855,43013,310395,6297,21741,22034,239348,426750,348011,344917,344926,344916,378260,384180,426788,489854,489856,24392,21992,306590,21739,298114,22764,21738,28774,239343,239347,23759,328631,471918,67134,306588,21848,42570,24363,309513,239344,24098,384183,489857],"class_list":["post-2487876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-affiliate","tag-and","tag-arts","tag-bananas","tag-baseball","tag-city","tag-clinics","tag-content","tag-downtown","tag-eamotion","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-events-u0026-listings","tag-hawkeyes","tag-hospitals","tag-ia","tag-ia-content-sharing","tag-iowa","tag-iowa-city","tag-iowa-city-downtown","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-kinnick","tag-kinnick-stadium","tag-listings","tag-live","tag-live-sporting-events","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-of","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-positive","tag-savannah","tag-savannah-bananas","tag-sharing","tag-sporting","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-stadium","tag-twitter","tag-u0026","tag-university","tag-university-of-iowa","tag-university-of-iowa-hospitals-and-clinics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Savannah-Bananas-bring-energy-to-Kinnick-ahead-of-the-first.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487878,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487876\/revisions\/2487878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2487877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}