You gave me something my daughter and I can bond over together
In the space between spectacle and service, Jesse and Emily Cole have found a way to make the invisible visible. The Savannah Bananas, known for their acrobatic brand of exhibition baseball, have quietly built a second mission beneath the entertainment: honoring the foster families who open their homes to children in crisis, rarely receiving public acknowledgment for doing so. Through their nonprofit Bananas Foster, launched in 2024, the Coles draw on their own experience as foster and adoptive parents to transform sold-out stadiums into places of genuine civic recognition. It is a reminder that a platform, however playful its origins, can be turned toward the things a society most needs to see.
- Foster care remains one of the least publicly discussed forms of caregiving, leaving families who do this work largely unseen and unthanked.
- The Coles, themselves foster and adoptive parents, felt the weight of that invisibility firsthand after welcoming two girls who were meant to stay temporarily and never left.
- Bananas Foster places a foster family on the field at every game, turning tens of thousands of spectators into a spontaneous audience of gratitude — 45,000 people rose at Citizens Bank Park; the same happened at Fenway.
- The initiative uses the rare power of multigenerational, sold-out entertainment to insert foster care into public conversation where it has rarely appeared before.
- The effort is landing as both symbol and substance — real families, real crowds, real applause — slowly shifting what society chooses to acknowledge out loud.
Jesse and Emily Cole built the Savannah Bananas around a version of baseball designed to be watched by everyone at once — toddlers, parents, and grandparents sharing the same impossible spectacle. Banana Ball features bare-handed catches mid-backflip, stilts on the base paths, and ground balls bounced between a fielder's legs before being thrown home. The games sell out major stadiums. The crowds are enormous. And the Coles have decided that kind of attention carries a responsibility.
They are licensed foster parents themselves. When their family included one biological son, they received a call about a two-year-old girl who needed placement. Then came a newborn who had tested positive for drugs at birth. Both placements were meant to be temporary — foster care, as Emily Cole describes it, is about supporting children until reunification with biological family becomes possible. For the Coles, that moment never came. They adopted both girls permanently.
That experience shaped what they chose to build next. In 2024, they launched Bananas Foster, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating foster families and educating the public about foster care — a subject that rarely surfaces in mainstream conversation. At every Banana Ball game, a foster family is brought onto the field. The crowd stands. At Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, 45,000 people rose to applaud a family doing quiet, often thankless work. The same scene unfolded at Fenway Park in Boston.
Emily Cole frames the mission simply: they create joy through baseball every night, but they also know about a need the world tends to overlook. Jesse Cole recalls a father who approached him after a game, moved by the fact that the experience had given him and his daughter something to share. For Cole, that moment clarified what the whole enterprise is really for — not the tricks, but the togetherness. Bananas Foster extends that same logic to foster families: it takes work done in private, often in silence, and places it under stadium lights, asking thousands of strangers to stand up and say that it matters.
Jesse and Emily Cole stand at the intersection of two worlds: the theatrical chaos of exhibition baseball and the quiet, often invisible work of foster care. The Savannah Bananas, their team, play a version of the sport they've branded Banana Ball—a game where players catch pop-ups bare-handed while backflipping, run to first base on stilts, and bounce ground balls between their legs before throwing them home. It's entertainment designed to be watched by everyone at once: toddlers, parents, grandparents, all in the same stadium, all watching the same impossible thing happen on the field.
But the Coles have built something larger than trick plays and sold-out crowds. They've created a platform, and they've chosen to use it for something most people never think about: the families who take in children who have nowhere else to go.
The Coles are licensed foster parents themselves. When they had one biological son, they received a call about a two-year-old girl who needed placement. A year later came another call—a newborn who had tested positive for drugs at birth. Both children were meant to be temporary. Foster care, as Emily Cole explains it, is about walking alongside children and families until reunification with biological relatives becomes possible. That was always the plan. But for the Coles, that moment never came. They adopted both girls permanently.
That experience—the weight of it, the meaning of it—shaped what they decided to do with their platform. In 2024, they launched Bananas Foster, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating and educating the public about foster families. At every Banana Ball game, a foster family is invited onto the field. The crowd, often numbering in the tens of thousands, stands and applauds them. These are people who rarely hear public thanks for what they do. At Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia last fall, 45,000 people stood for a foster family. At Fenway Park in Boston, the same thing happened. The games sell out. The recognition is real.
Emily Cole describes the broader mission plainly: "We believe we have a responsibility to just do good things in the world." They create joy every night through baseball, she says, but they also know about a need that society largely ignores. Foster care is not a topic that gets discussed much in public conversation. It exists in the margins. The Coles saw an opportunity to change that—to use the fact that people come to their games, that families sit together for hours, that generations connect over something shared.
Jesse Cole recalls a man who approached him after a game. "He goes, 'You gave me something that my daughter and I can bond over together. You have no idea how much this means to me.'" For Cole, a father of two daughters, that moment crystallized why Banana Ball exists at all. It's not really about the stilts or the backflips. It's about creating a space where people who might otherwise sit in separate rooms can sit together and feel something together.
The Bananas Foster initiative does something similar for foster families. It takes work that is often solitary, often thankless, and places it under stadium lights. It says: what you do matters. The crowd's standing ovation is not metaphorical. It's thousands of people, on their feet, acknowledging something true about the world—that some families open their homes to children in crisis, and that deserves to be seen.
Notable Quotes
There are so few things in life that you can bring multiple generations to and they can connect over— Emily Cole, co-owner of the Savannah Bananas
The goal of foster care is to just walk alongside these kids and these families until they can reunify safely with biological family— Emily Cole, describing the philosophy behind their foster care work
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did the Coles decide to focus on foster care specifically, rather than another cause?
They lived it. They didn't just write a check to foster care—they became foster parents themselves, and then adoptive parents. That changes what you see. You stop thinking about foster care as an abstract social problem and start thinking about it as the two-year-old girl who needed a home, the newborn who needed safety. When you've held those children, you can't unsee the need.
But they could have just donated money quietly. Why use the baseball platform?
Because money alone doesn't change how society thinks about something. Foster care is invisible. People don't talk about it. The Coles realized they had something rare—a space where 45,000 people gather, where families sit together, where attention is already focused. They could either use that attention for entertainment alone, or they could use it to say: look at these families. See them.
What does a standing ovation actually do for a foster family?
It's hard to overstate. Foster parents work in isolation most of the time. Nobody throws them a parade. Nobody thanks them at the grocery store. A standing ovation from thousands of strangers says: your work is visible, it's valued, it matters. For people who chose to do something difficult and often thankless, that recognition can be transformative.
Do you think Banana Ball's entertainment approach—the stilts, the backflips—actually helps the foster care message land?
Yes, because it brings people together first. The entertainment creates the gathering. Then, in that moment when everyone is already connected, when families are sitting together and feeling good, the Coles introduce the foster family. The message lands differently when you're already in a space of joy and togetherness.
What's the gap they're actually trying to fill?
Society doesn't talk about foster care. It's not in the news, it's not in casual conversation, it's not celebrated. The Coles are using their platform to say: this exists, this matters, and these families deserve recognition. They're making visible what was invisible.