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How The Country's Goofiest Baseball Team Made Millions

The Savannah Bananas' Jesse Cole turned an unloved team into the hottest ticket in town. Now he has a lesson for every CEO who wants to turn a company around: Stop doing what people hate.

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By Jennifer Miller

Jason Frank

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Baseball is a game of tradition, and Grayson Stadium is as traditional as they come. The Savannah venue was built in 1926, back when game-day radio broadcasts were a new thing. The Boston Red Sox held spring training here, leading Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson to round its bases. For three decades, a local high school also took Grayson's field for its annual Thanksgiving Day game against a military academy. And between 1984 and 2015, it was home to a minor league team called the Sand Gnats. This was all baseball in its classic form -- orderly and staid, romanticized by purists.

Now? Things are a little different.

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