The Banana Ball universe expanded from four teams to six with the addition of two new teams this week. The league—now formally called the Banana Ball Championship League—introduced the Indianapolis Clowns and Loco Beach Coconuts, who will join the Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, and of course the Savannah Bananas in 2026.
Indianapolis Clowns
The Indianapolis Clowns, developed in partnership with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, reprise the tradition of a barnstorming Negro Leagues team that played from the 1930s all the way into the 1980s. The original Clowns were known for their entertaining style of baseball, combining showmanship and athleticism in a manner reminiscent of contemporary Banana Ball.
“When I first heard the story of the Indianapolis Clowns, I was inspired,” said Banana Ball founder and team owner Jesse Cole. “They were the first baseball team to put entertainment first and would go to great lengths to bring their style of baseball to fans all over the country.”
The logo, created by Dan Simon of Louisville-based Studio Simon, walks the line between honoring the historic origins of the nickname and establishing a new identity for a team called Clowns. One of the ways this brand ties to the past is through the choice of colors.
“Because this is an identity rooted in history, we wanted to represent the former team,” Dan Simon said. “Blue and red are normally colors that would be associated with clowns, but we wanted to use vintage hues of those colors—the tan or sepia color, darker red instead of a bright red, a dark navy instead of a bright blue.”
Another design consideration was that the public perception of clowns has shifted in the decades since the original Clowns played. Rather than the fun and whimsy of the circus, today many associate clowns with the creepy and murdery portrayals seen in Stephen King novels.
“In general, there is a faction of people out there who don’t like clowns,” Simon said. “There’s no getting around the fact that the team is named the Clowns and the logo should reflect that in some way, shape, or form.”
After playing around with a few ideas, including a banana-yellow baseball wearing a pointy clown hat, Simon settled on representing the idea of clowns through their oversized shoes.
“I remember Jesse [Cole] saying to me, well okay, but what are we going to do with just shoes?” Simon said. “The whole idea was the shoes with the laces tied together and hanging on the wall as they would in a locker room back in the day.”
Simon rounded out the Clowns identity with a custom font that evokes the heyday of traveling circuses.
Loco Beach Coconuts
The second team to join the Banana Ball Championship League in 2026, the Loco Beach Coconuts, will represent a hometown that is more metaphorical than geographic.
“Loco Beach is a state of mind,” Dan Simon said. “It’s a whole vibe of sun, surf, sand, and everything that goes along with that.”
The Coconuts brand is all things beachy—palm trees, sand, sun, a custom font inspired by surf rock album art, and a groovy anthropomorphic coconut flashing a four-fingered hang loose sign.
“Whenever I create a character, I have to decide what it’s doing,” Simon said. “You have to decide if it’s holding a bat, swinging a bat, wearing a glove, holding a ball, throwing a ball, whatever.”
Having the coconut character holding a baseball bat was an obvious choice, given that it’s a logo for a baseball-adjacent sports team. But what to do with his other hand?
“Well, you have the whole idea of sun, sand, and surf, and what do surfers do? They hang loose!” Simon said.
Simon also had an explanation for why, in this fictional resort town of anthropomorphic coconuts, the character has four fingers instead of the more traditional human number of five.
“It’s the unwritten rule of thumb for fingers, no pun intended, that cartoons have four fingers,” Simon said.
A secondary mark in Loco Beach’s suite of logos includes a coconut cut in half (hopefully not the same coconut as our groovy hang loose character from the primary logo!) with a yellow banana ball nested inside.
The Indianapolis Clowns and Loco Beach Coconuts will begin play in late February 2026.
