To find goofier, happier humans having more fun you’d probably need to go watch kids at an open fire hydrant in August.
And that’s the whole point for the Chicago Snowballs — the city’s newest co-ed baseball team that will offer up a brand of ball made popular by the Savannah Bananas baseball team in recent years. Think baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The Snowballs, which have no affiliation with the Banana League, take the field for their first game in front of paying customers on May 2 at Kerry Wood Cubs Field in Roscoe Village.
Sebastian Alarcon/Sun-Times
The Bananas are at the center of the six-team touring Banana League, and they offer a variety of exhibition baseball known as Banana Ball. It has become a bona fide phenomenon, filling the country’s biggest stadiums (including Rate Field last summer) with family friendly two-hour games featuring hurlers on stilts, flaming bats, backflipping catches, singing, dancing and the occasional crawling-baby race between innings.
The Snowballs, which have no affiliation with the Banana League, take the field for their first game in front of paying customers on May 2 at Kerry Wood Cubs Field in Roscoe Village.
Tickets go on sale April 1 and will run $15 for kids 12 and under and $30 for everyone else, said Snowballs CEO Cherie Travis. She likens the team, which has no home field at the moment, to a traveling circus, with about 10 games a month scheduled through September at ballparks largely in the Chicago area but around the Midwest, too.
Chicago Snowballs player Kyle Duff attempts a trick pop fly catch during team practice at the Dome at the Parkway Bank Sports Complex in suburban Des Plaines.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Travis got the idea to form the team after watching a television interview last year with Savannah Bananas owner Jesse Cole. She remembers thinking: “What a great way to spread joy in this world.” Travis, an attorney, real estate inves
