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I need to confess something that might get my citizenship revoked. I am whispering this, so please lean in:

I don’t like baseball.

I want to like it. I like the hot dogs. I like the idea of sitting outside. But somewhere around the fourth inning, I realize I am watching a three-hour meeting where everyone is dressed like a coal miner from 1912.

I sit there, staring at a child licking the seat in front of him, and I think: Is this entertainment? Or am I just paying $200 to watch time decay?

Baseball is doing what it was designed to do: be baseball. I’m the one who keeps showing up expecting it to be a concert or a monster truck rally. I’m the guy at the funeral asking if we can use a confetti cannon.

There is a man in Savannah, Georgia, named Jesse Cole. Imagine if Willy Wonka was a motivational speaker and also a banana. He wears a bright yellow tuxedo. Not for prom. For life.

Jesse realized that baseball is dying because the median age of a fan is 57, and the average game is longer than The Godfather but with zero horses in beds.

He decided to save baseball by ruining it.

He started a team called the Savannah Bananas.

(He got booed at the parade. A parade! Getting booed at a parade is impressive. That’s like getting fired from a volunteer position.)

Jesse looked at baseball and asked a very dangerous question: "What are the boring parts?"

Then he deleted them.

Boring: The Mound Visit. (The catcher walks out to talk to the pitcher about their feelings).

Banana Solution: Banned. No feelings allowed. Throw the ball.

Boring: The Walk. (It is literally called a "Walk." It is the transportation method of the tired).

Banana Solution: Sprints. If the pitcher throws four balls, the batter sprints. The defense has to throw the ball around to every fielder before they can tag him out. It is chaos. It is cardio.

Boring: Foul balls.

Banana Solution: If a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out.

Note: I love this. You are eating nachos, a ball comes your way, and suddenly you are the starting left fielder. You have stats.

This is my favorite part. During tryouts, a kid showed up. He wasn't great at baseball. But he owned stilts.

He asked Jesse, "Do you want me to wear the stilts?"

Jesse said, "Can you hit in them?"

The kid said, "No."

Jesse hired him.

They created a roster spot called "The Entertainment Player." Now, "Stilts" is a viral sensation. He hits line drives while being nine feet tall.

The traditional baseball guys—the ones who treat the rulebook like a holy text—hated this. They said it was a circus. They said it was disrespectful.

But the Bananas sold out Fenway Park. They sold out football stadiums. They have more TikTok followers than every MLB team combined.

Why does this work?

There is a guy named Dr. Peter McGraw who runs the Human Research Lab (which sounds like a place where they build cyborgs, but they actually study humor). He has a theory called Benign Violation.

Traditional baseball is "safe." Safe is boring. Boring is dangerous.

The Bananas are a violation. But because nobody is getting hurt, it creates joy.

Definition: The virtue of playfulness.

Origin: Aquinas (The heavy hitter of theology).

Eutrapelia means having the ability to be playful, to joke, to not treat every moment of your life like a performance review at a bank. Aquinas basically said, "It is a sin to be a bore." (I am paraphrasing, but barely).

Your Challenge: How Now, Sacred Cow?

Find one thing in your life—a meeting, a family dinner, a way you write emails—that is boring. Ask yourself: Why are we doing it this way?

If the answer is "Tradition," that is a code word for "We are asleep."

Try to add some Eutrapelia. Make it dumb. Wear a yellow tux. If people boo you, remember: You are just waking them up.

Stay curious. Stay ridiculous.

And remember: A walk is just a run that gave up.

—David