Mike Tollin hopes to make the Savannah Bananas the next Ted Lasso

Mike Tollin has spent enough time in Hollywood to know how difficult the next steps can be as he tries to turn the Savannah Bananas into baseball’s version of Ted Lasso.

The Havertown native has signed a deal for the television rights to the Bananas, the wildly popular baseball team that brings its Harlem Globetrotter-like show to Citizens Bank Park on Saturday, and has secured a production studio. Next, he needs to hire a screenwriter and find a distributor willing to shoot a pilot or even commit to an entire first season about how a wacky baseball team built a waiting list of more than 3 million people.

” READ MORE: Who are the Savannah Bananas? Here's everything you need to know before they play at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday.

There's one thing Tollin doesn't have to figure out for himself: characters. The Bananas have plenty of them.

“We have a full cast,” said Jesse Cole, who founded the team in 2016 with his wife, Emily, and leads every game while wearing a yellow tuxedo and top hat. “From a male cheerleading squad to a senior dance team to breakdancing coaches, twerking referees, Princess Potassium, myself and Emily. There are so many people involved in performing the show that it would do pretty well on television.”

Cole approached Tollin a few years ago, who had only a passing knowledge of the Bananas. The team – which plays baseball under its own rules with a game called “Banana Ball” – has sold out major league stadiums across the country this year and has a waiting list for its games in Georgia.

Cole told Tollin that there had been interest in turning his venture into a television show, but he thought Tollin was the right person.

Tollin produced radio And Coach CarterDirection Summer catch And Arlissand was executive producer of The last dancethe 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan's final season with the Chicago Bulls. He saw enough during his visit to Savannah to believe the Bananas could be his next victory.

“I was surprised and flattered,” Tollin said. “It's a great, great story. Incredible human interest.” [Cole] really had a vision and he's a real showman. There's a big word: tireless. But if you look it up in the dictionary, there's a picture of Jesse in his yellow costume because he's just tireless and keeps going.”

The Bananas were a collegiate summer league team until 2022, when Cole decided to go full-on Banana Ball. Their games have a two-hour time limit, and Cole has eliminated all the “boring” parts of a baseball game, like mound visits and walks. A foul ball caught in the stands is an out, batters routinely dance to home plate, and a pitcher wears stilts on the mound. The players are top-notch players — most have played college ball — but the games are as much about the show as the baseball. It's entertainment created by a man who cites Walt Disney and PT Barnum as two of his biggest influences.

“When we started, we only sold a handful of tickets,” Cole said. “I got hung up on and kicked out of meetings several times and not accepted like I am today. We had this big, crazy vision, and I think a lot of people didn't get it because we hadn't shown it yet. When they started coming to the games in Savannah and saw what we were doing, they said, 'OK. Wow. I get it. This is different.' Then we had a bigger vision and said we were going to create a new sport. That's the craziest thing. Yes, the bananas and the dancing and the fun. But creating this sport, Banana Ball, was one of the biggest risks we took. … To see a waiting list of almost 3 million people, it's unbelievable.”

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Tollin plans to devote the show's first season to the story of how the Bananas came to be, after Cole moved to Savannah with his wife in 2015 and leased the city's historic baseball stadium. The Coles sold their house, slept on an air mattress, emptied their bank accounts and did whatever it took to make the Bananas work.

“It was one of the hardest things we've ever had to go through,” Cole said. “But I'm also so grateful because it made me realize how far we've come since then. Since the early days of the film and the book, people have supported the underdogs. They want to find people they can cheer on and relate to. I think everyone has challenges and adversities to overcome. To some extent, we were able to overcome a pretty big one.”

The Bananas are a baseball team, but Tollin believes the show will appeal to far more than just baseball fans, which Tollin says is key to the show's success. Ted Lasso is not just for football fans, and The last dance was not just for basketball junkies.

“The secret is that there has to be a much broader base than just baseball fans,” Tollin said. “That's the secret of Banana Ball. You don't have to be a baseball fan to love Banana Ball. That's what we hope for the show. Banana Ball is a great mix of baseball and entertainment. It never gets boring. You never know what to expect.”

” READ MORE: Meet the Savannah Bananas before they take over Citizens Bank Park

Tollin will be at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday to watch the Bananas. During his visit to Savannah, he marveled at the team's extra-inning rule – which allows for one pitcher, one catcher and one fielder against one batter – and watched former Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon pitch in a kilt. Saturday night is expected to be just as wild. The team has surprises planned and is ready for some fun. The characters will be there. And maybe they could soon be TV stars.

“It's no secret that the business is under pressure, budgets are tight and margins are thin,” Tollin said. “But that's not the way to look at it. We fall in love with something, expect to have our heads turned a little bit, and just keep going. There are people who love that because the bananas have so much appeal. We're going to ride the wave of their popularity in the world and move the thing forward. The show will be very, very different, but I think people will be drawn to it.”