81-Year-Old Savannah Bananas Fan Proves You’re Never Too Old to Chase Your Dreams

Published: March 18, 2026

By Mallory Mattingly

The Savannah Bananas welcomed a new teammate to the dugout! 81-year-old Robb Herrelson.

“You can watch baseball and fall asleep on the couch, but you don’t fall asleep with the Bananas playing,” Herrelson told the TODAY Show. “I’ll hit the ball and jump on that bike and take off and ride to first base. The game is made to have fun.”

“And that’s what the Bananas do. They have fun at it,” he added. “We need something to laugh about and something to joke about. And I think their concept is just fabulous.”

Because of his love for Banana Ball, he decided to submit an audition tape for the team.

After the Bananas watched the audition tape, Herrelson was asked to come play with them. He entered the game on a bicycle and was given an at-bat.

“The most awesome thing that I’ve ever done in my life. I really didn’t hear anything,” he said on the TODAY Show. “I was just focused on what I had to do. And once I got up to home plate, I just set the bike up. And we thought it might have been scripted a little bit, but the coach told me, ‘They’re going to try and strike you out.'”

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Herrelson was given four pitches. The first pitch “had fire behind it” as it was in the “upper 90s.” The second pitch was a bit high to the point where Herrelson thought it was a ball, but the umpire called it a strike. The third pitch Herrelson “got the timing just right and hit it and foul-tipped it.” He was given one more pitch, which unfortunately struck out.

“But after the game, a lot of the kids, they were telling me, they were saying we saw that foul tip,” he said of his time with the Bananas.

His secret to riding a bike and swinging a baseball bat at 81? Exercise.

“The trick to life is exercise, and I have exercised my whole life,” he said on the show.

Herrelson revealed that he used to be a runner but had to get a hip replacement. Due to his new hip, Herrelson made a “protector” so that he wouldn’t be hit with a fastball and break it.

“I made a protector for my hip out of a five-gallon bucket,” he said. “I cut a sliver out of a five-gallon bucket and ran it through my belt and tied it to it because I thought they were going to script the game, but they didn’t. They did not at all, and I did not want to be hit in that hip. Not by a 100-mile-per-hour fastball. I did not want to be hit in that hip.”

Herrelson proves that you’re never too old for your dreams to come true.

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