(TNS) —A player donning a racing helmet backflipped onto home plate for a walk-off win — of an inning. A fan caught a foul ball to win $50,000 for another fan. A player on stilts recorded a strikeout.

It was anything but a normal night at PNC Park as the Savannah Bananas took over Friday, and the capacity crowd couldn’t get enough.

The barnstorming team that has sold out stadiums across the country and gathered millions of followers on social media delighted Pittsburgh as they battled the Texas Tailgaters in their modified form of baseball called “Banana Ball” on the first night of a two-game stand.

The game was decided by one of Banana Ball’s signature rules: the “showdown tiebreaker.” The teams went back and forth with one hitter facing a defense that had only two or three players on the field depending on the round. The hitter had to score.

In the end, it didn’t matter how many defenders were on the field. The Bananas’ Eric Jones Jr. smashed a walk-off homer to left field — a grand slam because the bases are automatically loaded in the third round of the showdown — to end the game about 20 minutes past its slated two-hour time limit, not that anyone seemed to mind.

If it were a normal game, the Tailgaters would have won 9-7 thanks to a five-run seventh inning. But in Banana Ball, it’s “win the inning, get the point” — and that tenet delivered the walk-off drama.

“This game always has action,” Jones said. “You can’t take your eyes off of it.”

The Bananas’ first trip to the Steel City was a homecoming for Pittsburgh-area natives Alex Ziegler from Butler and Ryan Cox from Raccoon Township, and the sellout crowd greeted them with raucous roars throughout the game.

Before Cox’s first at-bat, the team played a video of him singing along to Mac Miller hits at a variety of sites throughout the city featured in the late rapper’s songs, and Cox then dashed out from center field to “Knock Knock.”

Ziegler performed his famed balancing tricks before the game, even propping a ladder on top of his nose for several seconds.

The fans weren’t always so good to the Butler product. Before the game, he said his favorite Banana Ball rule was the one allowing fan-caught foul balls to count as outs.

But in his second at-bat in the bottom of the third inning, a fan wearing a shirt with a dabbing Banana barehanded a foul ball down the first-base line to retire Ziegler.

Mr. Beast doles out big prizes

That wasn’t the only notable fan catch. YouTube star MrBeast — whose channel has more subscribers than any other — made a surprise appearance before the top of the sixth inning and announced he would give $50,000 to one fan who won a challenge against another.

A member of MrBeast’s team, Chandler Hallow, stepped into the batter’s box wearing a Bananas jersey. If he reached base, one random fan would win $50,000. If the Tailgaters pitcher got him out, a different fan took home the money.

Hallow lined a ball foul down the right-field line, where a man in Pirates gear plucked it from the air to win $50,000 for the fan lucky enough to be on the Tailgaters’ side — 13-year-old Bowen Horton from McDonald.

“Thank you for $50,000,” he told his hero in the stands over the loudspeaker.

MrBeast and Bananas owner Jesse Cole would later gift the foul ball-catching fan, Brian, with $10,000. But Brian’s lucky night wasn’t over.

Hallow returned to the plate for the Bananas in the bottom of the ninth as the “golden batter” — and this time, Brian would win if the Tailgaters retired the YouTuber. Hallow grounded out to first, and it turned into an even more profitable night for Bowen’s champion.

Crowd hyped early

The spectacle began long before first pitch. Fans poured across the Roberto Clemente Bridge as the pregame plaza opened at 2 p.m.

Federal Street outside the park quickly filled with fans clad in the Bananas’ bright yellow, which nearly matched the paint on the iconic bridge behind. They rushed to line up for autographs from players.

Many waited for the 10-foot-9 Dakota “Stilts” Albritton, who nimbly reached down from his perch to grab a shirt to autograph or take a selfie with a fan far below.

Ziegler and Cox also attracted large lines as they signed in front of Willie Stargell’s statue.

And the hoopla just didn’t stop from there.

By about 4:30 p.m. — two-and-a-half hours before the game — the street was completely packed. The crowd peeled as the Bananas waded through, doling out high fives as they made their way to the stage at one end of the plaza.

After a rousing edition of “Hey Baby,” the team opened the gates and PNC Park filled with a crowd far larger and more joyful than the North Shore has seen much of this summer.

Pirates fans speak out

Of course, Bananas yellow wasn’t the only shade in the stands Friday — there was plenty of Pirates gear, as well.

Some of those fans lamented that PNC Park hasn’t often looked like it did Friday amid a season when the Pirates sit last in the NL Central and second-to-last in National League attendance.

“If the Pirates could put a winning product on the field, this would happen on a regular basis,” said Tony Gratter, a 60-year-old from Millvale.

Scott Milburn, of Mt. Lebanon, suggested a name (and ownership) change.

“I keep hoping someone will buy the Pirates and turn it into the Pittsburgh Yinzers and actually fill the stadium every day,” he said.

Bananas quirks

The night was filled with singing, dancing and funny skits. The lights went out and phone flashlights shone as the crowd sang Coldplay’s “Yellow” late in the game, just one of many singalongs throughout the night.

It was sometimes hard to remember a baseball — er, Banana Ball — game was going on as the Bananas’ team of burly male cheerleaders, the “Man-Nanas,” busted a move down the first-base line or the teams took a dance break between pitches.

Before the game, two players tossed bananas from the top of the stadium to the field, where two fans tried to catch them in oversized pants. During an inning break, four children in penguin costumes raced, or at least waddled, from center field to their mothers waiting at home plate.

The famous racing Pirates pierogi weren’t left out — but rather than dashing around the warning track, they ran from each base toward the pitcher’s mound and collided. The last pierogi standing won.

There were plenty of quirks on the field, as well. The teams combined for 18 trick plays, including a between-the-legs catch at first base from Ziegler and a between-the-legs play at shortstop from Cox, the team’s all-time leader in trick plays.

Albritton, whom the Bananas call the world’s tallest baseball player, struck out a batter to end the top of the sixth inning with a runner in scoring position while atop his signature stilts.

The “win the inning, get the point” rule meant if the Bananas scored more runs in any inning, the frame effectively ended with a walk-off. When Malachi Mitchell, nicknamed “Flash Tha Kid,” had the chance to score the winning run in the third inning, he backflipped onto home in his signature lightning-bolt helmet.

Game gets competitive

Despite the hijinks, there was still an actual game going on. By the deciding innings, the players and fans seemed to relish the drama.

Bananas pitcher Danny Hosley shut down the Tailgaters in the ninth inning and then induced weak contact in the first two rounds of the showdown for easy outs. His strikeout in the third round of the tiebreaker, with the bases loaded, set the stage for Jones’ walk-off slam.

“It’s definitely a show, don’t get me wrong,” Hosley said. “But once we get to that ninth inning on, it turned into a competitive match between two baseball teams, which I enjoy a lot.”

Jones, one of the team’s home run leaders, was elated after his heroic moment.

“For it to be in a major league stadium, for it to be in front of 40,000 people with MrBeast shooting a YouTube video here, I got to save the day,” he said. “It just couldn’t be any more glorious.”

High praise for Pittsburgh

Ziegler and Cox both said they had relished the chance to show their teammates around their hometown. It did not disappoint.

“I told everyone, ‘You’re going to love Pittsburgh,’ ” Ziegler said. “And they’re like, ‘You’re so right.’ ”

Jones was impressed. He said the home of the Pirates “could be the most beautiful park in the country. I’ve seen basically all of them at this point.”

Before the game, Cox — a lifelong Pirates fan — said his last time at field level was probably during a stadium tour in 2003.

The Savannah Bananas’ Ryan Cox reacts after making a defensive play at PNC Park on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.The Savannah Bananas’ Ryan Cox reacts after making a defensive play at PNC Park on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. (Lucy Schaly/Post-Gazette)

“I always wanted to be [former Pirates shortstop] Jack Wilson,” Cox said, standing on the field before the game. “So getting to come down here and be surface level, take some ground balls where he played and really soak in the skyline, it’s been something I’ve been dreaming of since I was a little kid.”

The Hopewell grad will get to live that dream again Saturday, as the Bananas take on the Tailgaters at 7 p.m. Fans who couldn’t snag a ticket can watch on truTV, HBO Max or the team’s YouTube channel.