Fayette County’s Connection To Banana Ball: Joe Mikulik

Fayette County native Joe Mikulik has spent the last 40 years working in professional baseball. Saturday at Kyle Field in College Station, he walked out in front of the biggest crowd of his career – 102,000 fans who came to watch his team, the Texas Tailgaters, face off against the Savannah Bananas. The Tailgaters won 4-3, and a lot of folks from Fayette County were there to see it.

“It was incredible,” Mikulik said. “It was something that every little child growing up dreamed about – playing in that stadium. I mean, obviously football, but then when you make the transition into baseball, it’s like a unicorn. It’s something that’s never been done before. Hopefully, we can make this an annual event as we grow and continue to do this Banana Ball stuff.”

Banana Ball, the brainchild of creator Jesse Cole, offers a unique twist on baseball. There’s a two-hour time limit for games. There are no walks. Batters may not bunt or step out of the batter’s box. A foul ball caught by a fan counts as an out. Runs do not count as points. Rather, the team that wins an inning gets one point. No new inning may start after two hours, so the team with the most points at the two-hour mark wins. The team with the most “trick plays” can also earn an additional point.

But it’s not just different rules that makes the game so captivating to new fans. Players, coaches and umpires constantly strive to entertain the fans. Batters sometimes wear stilts or hit from a unicycle.

Players wear capes, cowboy hats, or in Mikulik’s case, boots, chaps and a big belt buckle. Teams perform dance routines during warmups and after the game. At the start of Saturday’s game in Kyle Field, Mikulik lit a barbecue pit set up just off the first base line. Cole’s guiding philosophy has been “Fans First,” and that’s what he named his company, Fans First Entertainment.

“We have 11 Fan First Principles, and I think its number six, is ‘constantly curious,’” Mikulik said. “If you are at a game, you are constantly curious about what is going to happen next. What’s the next trick play? What’s the next walk-up? What’s the next entertainer that’s going to come out?”

Mikulik grew up in Fayette County and attended Bishop Forest High School in Schulenburg, where he was a standout baseball player. After graduation, he walked on at San Jacinto Junior College “I didn’t have anybody recruiting me or anything,” he said. “I grew up on a little farm. I’ll never forget my mom saying, ‘That’s too far, you can’t do that.’ It was an hour and a half away from the house. But my dad was like, ‘No, he’s got to go.’” Mikulik played well enough at San Jacinto to get picked up by the Houston Astros in the 1984 draft. He played 11 seasons in the minor leagues and the Mexican league, mostly as an outfielder. He compiled a minor league batting average of .274 with 996 hits, 78 home runs, 527 RBIs, and 135 stolen bases, mostly in Triple-A ball. He went on to coach and manage minor league teams for nearly three decades. Some of his managerial antics with umpires became the stuff of legend. But in all that time, he never got to step on a major league field in uniform. Then in 2024, a new opportunity came knocking. Mikulik was working as a bench coach for the Spokane Indians, a minor league team in the Colorado Rockies organization. A friend of his, former Major Leaguer Jason Hart, who coached with Mikulik for the Frisco Rough-Riders, recommended him to some folks working in Banana Ball.

“I wanted to stay in pro ball, chasing that dream of getting to the big leagues,” Mikulik said.

The folks at Fan First Entertainment offered him an interview. He went back for a second interview, and then a third interview with Banana Ball creator Jesse Cole.

“I kind of felt stuck, you know, no big league time,” Mikulik said. “I got zero days in the big leagues. I felt stuck. I felt like, what do I need to do? I would network. I would ask and would never get an answer from anyone. I still had jobs in the minor leagues. But I didn’t feel like I was appreciated. Fans First Entertainment came and immediately I felt like I was appreciated. Immediately I felt like I was wanted. And that’s the difference.”

But Mikulik had some doubts.

“I woke up one morning and told my wife Candy, ‘I can’t do this Banana Ball thing. I got to go back to the Rockies. I feel loyal to them. I think that’s where I need to be.’ And she looked at me with death in her eyes and said, ‘You need to go to Banana Ball. You need to go to Fans First Entertainment.’” The company hired him as the head coach of a new team in the Banana League, the Texas Tailgaters. His first day on the job was April 1, 2025. It was quite a transition. In Banana Ball, he’s a head coach, not a “manager.”

“They call it ‘head coach’ because they say people don’t want to be managed, they want to be coached,” he said.

The players come from all walks of the baseball world, Mikulik said, from college players trying to catch a break to veteran minor leaguers trying to extend their careers.

While Mikulik handles the actual baseball aspect of the game, another group of folks coaches the players on entertainment.

“These guys are extremely talented,” Mikulik said of the players. “They can dance. The entertainment group will give them a video, a YouTube video on how to do this line dance, like two days before our show, and they’ll kill it. They’ll knock it out. I see our guys dancing in the hotels, they dance in the batting cages, they’re practicing their dances in the clubhouse. I mean, it’s a whole scheme of practicing and rehearsing before they go out on the field and perform.

“But then they still throw strikes, they can make plays, and the trick plays are another element of the game that’s entertaining for the fans,” he added. “The behind-the-back catches, the backflip catches, between the legs, and all the stuff that we do. They pop the ball up and catch the ball in the hat. There’s a lot that goes on and they practice constantly.”

Mikulik thinks Banana Ball is rekindling a love for baseball in America, especially among kids.

“We’re trying to create joy, happiness, peace, love for the game,” he said. “We’re trying to create a culture where there’s a little kid in the backyard playing with a yellow ball and he’s having fun playing with the yellow ball.

“Today’s youth baseball, I think, is out of control,” he said. “The travel leagues, the money that’s been spent, the equipment that are being spent on 10-year-olds. I see it and I’m like, you got to be kidding me. They’re spending so much money. (The kids) get burned out. Why can’t we just have a place where they’re having fun? And if you look at the ticket prices and if you look at what’s going on with us, Banana Ball, we keep it affordable for fans, we keep it affordable for families.”

Mikulik said the ticket prices for most seats at Kyle Field on Saturday were $40. The most expensive seats were $60. And the Thursday before, the Tailgaters played a “pop-up” game at Navasota High School. They didn’t announce the game until twoand- a-half hours before the first pitch. And everyone got free seats.

“Once they made the announcement, I heard people were starting to go to the ballpark,” Mikulik said. “And it was a ton of people. I think it was more than 1,000 people there. They showed up and you didn’t have to have a ticket. It was an opportunity for Fans First Entertainment to give back to the fans, and we’re going to do more of that since it was such a success.”

Keep up with Mikulik and the Texas Tailgaters by following them on Facebook, Instagram and the official Banana Ball website at www. bananaball.com.