MOOSIC, Pa. \u2014 “I just, I just can’t wait it to start, I can’t wait,\u201d said Jason Kephart from Portage.<\/p>\n
That’s the feeling of many baseball fans in the crowd as they waited for the gates of PNC Field in Moosic to open, and Friday night’s Banana Ball game to begin.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m just happy about him bringing me over here, it’s insane man, I can’t even speak right now,\u201d said Andrew Frey from West Wyoming.<\/p>\n
Roughly 10,000 people packed the ballpark to see The Firefighters take on the Loco Beach Coconuts.<\/p>\n
Some folks drove all the way from near Altoona to get here.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I was excited. We thought it was in PNC Park in Pittsburgh when she bought the tickets, but it was PNC Field in Scranton,\u201d said Buddy Kephart from Portage.<\/p>\n
Within an hour of tickets going on sale, Shawn Reilly, the President and General Manager of the RailRiders, says all 20,000 available tickets to the Banana Ball were sold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Bananas told us they had more interest from Scranton than pretty much any city in their whole circuit this summer,\u201d said Reilly.<\/p>\n
Reilly also said part of the reason the Banana Ball made a stop here was because of some recent upgrades.<\/p>\n
“The Bananas put out a show, and they want to go where there’s a nice video board and a sound system, and this off-season, we enhanced and increased our video board, and we repaired the sound system, and once we did that, we became eligible in their eyes to get this event,\u201d explained Reilly.<\/p>\n
But it’s because of the show, the dances, and the chance to meet the team that some say makes the Banana Ball so much more of a spectacle than a regular game of baseball.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t the same because you don’t get the player interaction like you do with Banana Ball. I believe that’s why everybody comes to these events now,\u201d said Calvin Schoch from Stroudsburg. \u201cYou’re more involved rather than sitting in the stands watching.”<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s game was only half the fun. On Saturday, the Loco Beach Coconuts and The Firefighters take over PNC Field again for another unique game of ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOOSIC, Pa. \u2014 “I just, I just can’t wait it to start, I can’t wait,\u201d said Jason Kephart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-200940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}