Pair Of Savannah Bananas Reconnect With Massachusetts Baseball Past

BROCKTON, Mass. - The Savannah Bananas continued their world tour with a fan-favorite baseball experience.

With the next stop coming in Brockton, Mass., a pair of players had a chance to return to the Bay State after spending time in the Cape Cod Baseball League during their collegiate careers.

Jackson Olson played for the Hyannis Harbor Hawks during the 2019 season while Noah Bridges joined the Cotuit Kettleers in 2021.

Both players found a new level of baseball growth during their previous time in Massachusetts.

"It's really cool," Olson told NESN.com in an interview on Wednesday. "Being from Connecticut and playing college ball there to being in Massachusetts on the Cape with Hyannis. It's been really cool coming back to all of these places to play Bananaball and not regular baseball."

Olson also embraced the Cape Cod community on a Hyannis team that, like many teams in the league, had a number of players selected as Major League Baseball draft picks.

"Being on that team was really cool with 14 or 15 guys getting drafted and five more getting signed," Olson added. "I think we had three shortstops get drafted in the first two rounds on one team."

For Bridges, the experience around Cape Cod provided him a glimpse of how fans would positively impact his baseball experience for years to come.

"My first time in Cotuit was my first introduction to being fans-first," Bridges told NESN.com in an interview on Wednesday. "I fell in love with that in Cotuit. Then, I came to Bananaland and my first day I was hitting in the bottom of the lineup. I asked if I could go into the crowd and they said yes. Cotuit gave me an introduction to the fans-first area and I fell in love with that. It' been awesome."

Years after their time in the Cape Cod Baseball League, both Bridges and Olson return to Massachusetts with a new style of baseball to share with fans.