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Banana Ball
- The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas
- Narrated by: Jesse Cole, Matt Martucci
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again.
This is their story.
For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia’s professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball.
Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to "Thriller" or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out; and players might go to bat on stilts or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.
But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.
This is a story that’s bigger than baseball and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, innovation, and joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories—love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.
This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
Critic reviews
Finalist for the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year
One of Kirkus' "10 Nonfiction Books To Broaden Your Summer Reading"
Featured in Garden and Gun's "The Big Southern Summer Reading List"
“To hell with designated hitters: This baseball-like game makes up the rules as it goes along. This particular circus is reimagining baseball as a game that not only purists and traditionalists can love. Anyone who can think outside the diamond will enjoy Cole’s entertaining yarn.”—Kirkus
“Banana Ball recounts [Cole’s] early passion for the game, how baseball introduced him to his wife, Emily, and the team’s wacky 2016 launch in the summer collegiate Coastal Plain League…what Cole hopes readers take away from the book is inspiration to stand out—with or without a yellow tux”—Atlanta
“Banana Ball provides an engaging look at the team’s founding and its 'fans first, entertain always' philosophy…Where the book really scores is when it focuses on Cole’s personal backstory, including his relationships with his dad and Emily and the early days of trying to build the Banana empire.” —Associated Press
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Story
Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago, which still stands. At the same time, he was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t. Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies, the rise and fall of Pete Rose, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
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Unflinching look at America through Baseball and Pete Rose
- By Brian G White on 04-02-24
By: Keith O'Brien
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Welcome to the Circus of Baseball
- A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time
- By: Ryan McGee
- Narrated by: Ryan McGee
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A gloriously funny, nostalgic memoir of a popular ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern for a minor league baseball team. Madness and charm ensue as Ryan McGee spends the season steeped in sweat, fertilizer, nacho cheese sauce, and pure, unadulterated joy in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists.
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A natural story teller
- By Robert Venegas on 07-19-23
By: Ryan McGee
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Fans First
- Change the Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience
- By: Jesse Cole
- Narrated by: Jesse Cole
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Packed with behind-the-peel stories, hard-earned lessons, and a few other surprises, Fans First teaches you how to stand out in your marketplace, drive explosive growth, and inspire fanatical loyalty.
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Great advice for business owners who want to succeed
- By My Silver Evolution on 01-08-23
By: Jesse Cole
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Why We Love Baseball
- A History in 50 Moments
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Joe Posnanski, Ellen Adair
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters.
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Why we love baseball
- By Michael Rooney on 08-03-24
By: Joe Posnanski
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The Boys of Summer
- The Classic Narrative of Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field, Covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and What's Happened to Everybody Since
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.
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Classic book!
- By Christopher Arthur on 11-19-17
By: Roger Kahn
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A Damn Near Perfect Game
- Reclaiming America's Pastime
- By: Joe Kelly, Rob Bradford - contributor
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Baseball’s most outspoken fireballer brings the high heat—calling out the hacks, cheats, and ridiculous rules that have tarnished the game—and pitches A-plus stuff on how to make baseball pure, fun, and damn near perfect.
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Could use a better narrator
- By Jason Monroe on 12-07-23
By: Joe Kelly, and others
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Charlie Hustle
- The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
- By: Keith O'Brien
- Narrated by: Ellen Adair, Keith O'Brien
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago, which still stands. At the same time, he was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t. Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies, the rise and fall of Pete Rose, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
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Unflinching look at America through Baseball and Pete Rose
- By Brian G White on 04-02-24
By: Keith O'Brien
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Welcome to the Circus of Baseball
- A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time
- By: Ryan McGee
- Narrated by: Ryan McGee
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A gloriously funny, nostalgic memoir of a popular ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern for a minor league baseball team. Madness and charm ensue as Ryan McGee spends the season steeped in sweat, fertilizer, nacho cheese sauce, and pure, unadulterated joy in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists.
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A natural story teller
- By Robert Venegas on 07-19-23
By: Ryan McGee
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Baseball
- A History of America's Favorite Game
- By: George Vecsey
- Narrated by: Alan Nebelthau
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author George Vecsey is an esteemed and award-winning sports journalist for the New York Times. In Baseball, he recounts the history of America's national pastime. Baseball has been around in various forms for thousands of years, but only within the last 200 years has it become an American institution. Growing from a sport played in open fields and big-city streets, baseball has seen its share of innovators and detractors, heroes and villains.
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Disappointing
- By Tomilee on 08-04-07
By: George Vecsey
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Negro League Baseball
- The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
- By: Neil Lanctot
- Narrated by: Todd Barsness
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of black professional baseball provides a remarkable perspective on several major themes in modern African American history: the initial black response to segregation, the subsequent struggle to establish successful separate enterprises, and the later movement toward integration. Baseball functioned as a critical component in the separate economy catering to black consumers in the urban centers of the North and South. While most black businesses struggled to survive from year to year, professional baseball teams and leagues operated for decades, representing a major achievement in black enterprise and institution building.
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The research is the message
- By JohnFern0813 on 06-08-16
By: Neil Lanctot
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The Bad Guys Won
- A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform - and Maybe the Best
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Jeff Pearlman
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.
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Maybe 3.5
- By Lifeisshort on 02-15-22
By: Jeff Pearlman
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The Church of Baseball
- The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit
- By: Ron Shelton
- Narrated by: Ron Shelton
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Bull Durham, the breakthrough 1988 film about a minor league baseball team, is widely revered as the best sports movie of all time. But back in 1987, Ron Shelton was a first-time director and no one was willing to finance a movie about baseball—especially a story set in the minors. The jury was still out on Kevin Costner’s leading-man potential, while Susan Sarandon was already a has-been. There were doubts. But something miraculous happened, and The Church of Baseball attempts to capture why.
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Great movie, great story
- By Kathy Morris on 07-11-22
By: Ron Shelton
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The Baseball 100
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 30 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”
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Just OK. Too Tangential & Distracting
- By Matthew R. on 01-21-23
By: Joe Posnanski
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Moneyball
- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
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Excellent Book, Outstanding Narration, Sloppy Edit
- By Dirk Turgid on 03-05-12
By: Michael Lewis
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Baseball
- By: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
- Narrated by: Ken Burns
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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The authors of the acclaimed and best-selling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American phenomenon: baseball. Geoffrey C. Ward's and Ken Burns’s moving and fascinating history of the game goes beyond stolen bases, double plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced, American life.
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Abridged
- By David Munoz on 02-15-16
By: Geoffrey C. Ward, and others
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Whispers of the Gods
- Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age, Told by the Men Who Played It
- By: Peter Golenbock, John Thorn - foreword
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Peter Golenbock brings to life baseball greats from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s through timeless stories told straight from the players themselves. Like the enduring classic The Glory of Their Times, this book features the reminiscences of baseball legends, pulled from hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the author. The players interviewed were All-Stars, Hall of Famers, and heroes to many, and their impact on the national pastime is still seen to this day. Baseball history comes alive, offering a fascinating account of the golden age of baseball.
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Excellent
- By Raylan Givens on 12-07-22
By: Peter Golenbock, and others
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The Soul of Baseball
- A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions - for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music - O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.
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Buck O’Neil fan!!
- By scott on 04-24-20
By: Joe Posnanski
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The Captain
- The Journey of Derek Jeter
- By: Ian O'Connor
- Narrated by: Nick Pollifrone
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.
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Great book, terrible narrator.
- By Butter on 05-09-14
By: Ian O'Connor
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The Greatest Summer in Baseball History
- How the '73 Season Changed Us Forever
- By: John Rosengren
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1973, baseball was in crisis. The first strike in pro sports had soured fans, American League attendance had fallen, and America's team—the Yankees—had lost more games and money than ever. Yet that season, five of the game's greatest figures rescued the national pastime. Hank Aaron riveted the nation with his pursuit of Babe Ruth's landmark home run record in the face of racist threats. George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees at a bargain basement price and began buying back their faded glory.
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Terrible, Just Terrible.
- By Anonymous User on 06-12-23
By: John Rosengren
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Ball Four
- The Final Pitch
- By: Jim Bouton
- Narrated by: Jim Bouton
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.
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Three Ten Year Updates Give Bouton a 5th Star
- By Byron on 08-09-12
By: Jim Bouton
What listeners say about Banana Ball
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- H. Montgomery Jr.
- 06-07-23
A Must Read Even If You Are Not. A Baseball Fan
This is a great read for a baseball fan, but everyone can gain some life lessons from it. The ideas and techniques used in the creation of banana ball, can be translated and used by anyone for any dream!
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- Kimberly
- 03-08-24
What do you mean you don’t know what Banana Ball is?
Amazing! Jesse Cole knocks it out of the park again with this book. I'm fascinated by the origin story of Banana Ball and Cole's aspirations for the future. What's even more impressive is that some of the "future" plans mentioned at the end of the book have already become a reality. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and can't wait for his next one!
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- Patrick J Carroll
- 10-15-23
Great book
A must read for any Banana’s fan.
Especially if you love the business side of things.
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- BeagleMom
- 04-17-24
The whole book!
I liked it all. It reminded me of a cross between Charlie Finley and SNL! I’m a die hard Braves fan, so I’ll look to see if we can ever make it on a day the ‘Naners are playing. I’m in TN, so it’s a trek that takes a little planning. Keep on dreaming and doing!
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- bdg
- 06-28-23
Inspiring story of a true visionary
Jesse Cole is one of the most inspiring visionaries. His willingness to take exorbitant risks because of a vision he’s committed to makes for an exciting listen here. Highly recommend.
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- dee palmer
- 07-01-23
Incredible book and true story!
I’m so glad that I found this book! A great reminder to dream big, to work on making other people’s lives better and share your story! I hope one day to bring my stepson and wife to see the Savanna Banana’s and Jesse Cole and his incredible team in action!
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- kathy eidsvoog
- 07-18-23
This is how we all should approach life
After finishing this book I feel so empowered and happy. I love baseball but tend to tune out when watching a game because of the slow pace. Watching a banana rules game would definitely keep my attention because you never know what’s going to happen next.
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- Coach Barnes
- 09-03-23
A Great Business Success Story
What a refreshing life and business success story!
The world needs more Jesse Coles.
A must read for any aspiring entrepreneurs!
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- Ron D.
- 07-06-23
Captured My Baseball Heart
This was an outstanding read. I have played up through college ball many years ago but this book brought me back to the years when baseball was fun and a little boys game. Thank You Jesse.
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- Jon M. Stolpe
- 10-14-23
Inspiring!
This book will inspire you to go do something amazing, something fun, something exciting, and something that might even be a little crazy.
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