As a very young boy in Texas, Kyle Luigs idolized Nolan Ryan, the fireballer who pitched 27 years in the major leagues, the last 14 in the Lone Star State, and set records with 5,714 strikeouts and seven no-hitters.
The native Texan, who last pitched in 1993, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999, the year after Luigs was born in Texas.
Luigs, whose family moved to Richmond Hill when he was in the fourth grade, grew up wanting to play professional baseball for the Texas Rangers.
“I was going to be the next Nolan Ryan,” Luigs said on Jan. 31, which by sheer coincidence was Ryan’s 77th birthday.
Instead, he is the first Kyle Luigs, pro pitcher for the Savannah Bananas, baseball entertainers who travel the country packing ballparks -- including home base at Grayson Stadium -- with their zany, unorthodox and family-friendly brand of Banana Ball.
The right-handed Luigs is literally a fireballer, as he thrown flaming baseballs from the mound.
The man in the banana-yellow cowboy hat also has pitched strikes from second base and performed numerous skits, trick plays and synchronized dances with his fielders set to music before hurling the ball home.
“Kyle is one of our leaders when it comes to those new trick plays and trick pitches and changing adjustments and timing of hitters,” Bananas head coach Tyler Gillum said. “He’s done a great job as we built Banana Ball.”
Luigs is living a version of his dream, one that today’s youngsters may want to emulate. Luigs, 25, has been a Savannah Banana as a collegiate or full-time pro player since 2018.
“I’ve realized that all I really wanted was a platform to impact the next generation of people that play baseball or impact people that want to be entertained and watch Banana Ball,” Luigs said. “I thought that I could only get that from being the Nolan Ryan of our generation for the Texas Rangers. But I found out pretty quickly that if you just keep wearing yellow long enough, that you can have that same platform and get to do what I’ve always wanted and impact people and make the game of baseball fun.”
Making baseball fun is a mantra of the Bananas, who debuted in 2016 as a member of the Coastal Plain League, a collegiate summer wood-bat league. The players were amateurs, of course, currently in college or just completing their eligibility.
The twist was the Bananas took promotions to an extreme level with fan interaction and player involvement before, during and after the home games. Not only were the players asked to be entertainers, they were winners on the field, capturing the league championship in their inaugural season.
Luigs says now that he regrets not joining the team sooner. Alas, he graduated from Richmond Hill High School in 2016.
Success at Richmond Hill High
The Wildcats won four straight region championships when Luigs attended Richmond Hill. He said he was on the junior varsity as a freshman and played mostly JV as a sophomore. Luigs was a starter as a junior, in a rotation with star seniors and future pro minor leaguers Brian Eichhorn and Chandler Newman.
Luigs was the ace of the staff as a senior and voted Region 3-5A Pitcher of the Year. He was 7-1 with a 2.33 ERA and 70 strikeouts in 63 innings.
“What I really loved to do was play outfield,” Luigs admitted. “That was my favorite thing to do. I thought I was really good at it. I love to go run baseballs down and catch them.”
Though he had power hitting from the left side, his right arm was his ticket to playing in college. He pitched three years at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega, where he earned a degree in kinesiology. After his senior season was cut short by the COVID pandemic, Luigs transferred to Jacksonville (Ala.) State for graduate school and pitching a final college season. He said he’s nine credit hours short of a master’s degree in sports management.
Perhaps he should get credit equivalency for real-world experience working for Bananas, whose business model has been studied and lauded by others in the industry.
Luigs and his buddy, catcher Bill LeRoy, became the first two players to be full-time, year-round employees in the organization after their four seasons in the CPL, including the 2021 title team. They are instructors in the Banana Academy youth camps and clinics, and they were on board as mentors during the team’s final CPL season in 2022, when Savannah repeated as champion before going all-in on the Banana Ball phenomenon as a traveling professional outfit.
“I think I hit the lottery on the whole first job out of college thing,” Luigs said. “I haven’t really had to look anywhere else. I’m very thankful to be part of the growth.”
From temporary to full time
LeRoy, who is from Dublin, Ga., and Luigs were teammates at UNG and housemates at the Luigs family home in Richmond Hill for summers with the Bananas. LeRoy noted that the pair signed temporary contracts that first summer of 2018 while the club waited for other targeted college players to become available.
“It’s a crazy story, it really is,” said LeRoy, who had a two-game contract. “It went from a couple of days to now going on seven years. We were not supposed to be here very long, and we knew that, and we joked in the car on the way here about who’s going to get cut first.”
They knew they had to make strong first impressions, as Luigs recalled, so they leaned into the Bananas’ mindset of “Fans First. Entertain Always.”
“Right away, (Luigs) was everything we were looking for in a pitcher,” Gillum recalled. “One, he threw strikes. He joined in on all the entertainment. He was fans first in everything he did. He had an opportunity, along with Bill LeRoy, they were teammates in college at that time. Both stayed with us that entire year and had a great summer for us. Every year, Kyle’s gotten better and better and better. That’s the epitome of who he is and how he’s matured. He’s gotten better as a pitcher and as a leader.”
Luigs acknowledges he was more reserved – especially compared to his extroverted friend LeRoy – when he first suited up in yellow. At Richmond Hill, he was quiet and shy unless he was around friends, when he could get loud.
But that’s not the same as playing and performing in front of crowds of 10,000 or more. Luigs admits he still has to adjust to getting outside his comfort zone as the bar is raised on the Bananas’ commitment to smashing perceptions of baseball as a slow, boring game.
“It takes all kinds of personalities and cultures and backgrounds to develop the chemistry we have on the team,” LeRoy said. “Kyle’s been willing to get out of his comfort zone a little bit and dance and have fun. Don’t let him fool you. He may be a little introverted, but he’s also one that enjoys a good time and have fun as well.
“He’s a great guy to have in the locker room. Guys connect with him easily. He might not be the center of attention, but he’s always leading by example, especially on the mound -- throwing 160 innings last year. Leading the way with doing his thing entertainment-wise and throwing strikes and getting guys out.”
Playing to win
It's still baseball between the lines, unscripted as the Bananas take on an opponent, usually the Party Animals, to determine that exhibition game who is better at hitting, pitching, fielding and running. The dynamic is harder because the same pitchers and batters face each other with great regularity, so they adjust, adapt and “reinvent themselves” to keep the opponent off balance.
Luigs, for example, is working on a changeup to add to his fastball and slider.
It’s still baseball, just the rules they play by are bizarre in contrast to the traditional game.
Luigs said the team trains hard at “straight-up baseball” so they will play well, or “none of this stuff really works.” They also work hard at the other stuff, the dancing, trick plays and creative content on social media, to put out an entertaining product.
In other words, they’ve got to be total professionals. That’s why Luigs is a good fit for the Bananas, said Adam Virant, assistant coach and director of baseball operations.
“He’s got such a level temperament that in the chaos of the games and the tour, he’s always at this really calm baseline,” Virant said. “He’s very intelligent and he knows how a show should operate, so he’s able to help folks when things are going crazy and things are speeding up on us, to help them keep their perspective. He’s tremendous to work with. His intelligence level and kindness, it’s pretty incredible.”
Luigs said he adapts to change rather easily – and things can change fast in Bananaland – as he sees the value in what they are doing. He also describes himself as “happy-go-lucky, so it’s pretty easy to go from one thing to the next.”
Luigs and LeRoy could have gone on from the Bananas during their final season in 2021, as they had offers from independent league teams in St. Louis and Montana.
“We were pretty close to pulling the trigger on that,” Luigs said.
But they loved playing in Savannah and saw a championship-caliber squad with a group of players that had been together a while. They also wanted to be part of building Banana Ball. Luigs said team owner Jesse Cole and team president Jared Orton talked to them, as the two longest-tenured players, about the future.
“I haven’t given it a second thought since we started working here full time,” Luigs said.
The Bananas this month opened their 2024 schedule, which is more ambitious than before with tour stops in some Major League Baseball ballparks. Luigs said while he loves home games at Grayson Stadium, he’s also looking forward in particular to games in California and playing at LSU’s ballpark in Baton Rouge and Fenway Park in Boston – all lifetime firsts.
And, “obviously, Houston,” he said, noting the March 9 game against the Party Animals at Minute Maid Park.
“A lot of family members will be there,” Luigs said. “It’ll be our first Major League (ballpark) game. Pretty cool.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of the Savannah Bananas & YouTube
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