Banana Ball, Knuckleballs, and Baseball Development | Fisher Polydoroff | Episode 91
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Host Ross Hawley sits down with Fisher Polydoroff, the 20-year-old vintage ballplayer, knuckleballer, and entertainment player for the Indianapolis Clowns, the newest team in Banana Ball. Polydoroff grew up in Keller, Texas, played at Weatherford College, and walked away from three years of college eligibility to take a job that uses everything he can do at once.
He plays a dozen instruments, speaks three languages, throws a knuckleball he learned from R.A. Dickey at nine years old, and answers to "Old Knuckles." The conversation covers how he decided Banana Ball fit him better than the draft did, how he actually throws the pitch, how he plans his days, and why he wants young players to keep a talent alive outside the game.
The highlights:
- Why a self-described baseball purist chose Banana Ball over the traditional route
- Riding the bench at a top junior college program, and what he did with that time
- The R.A. Dickey grip, and why a knuckleball is thrown with fastball arm action
- Nine knuckleballs and one fastball to close out a college game
- Twelve instruments, three languages, and a calendar that runs months ahead
- The vintage-uniform video that turned into a following
- What he has taken from Banana Ball founder Jesse Cole
- The "comedic relief pitcher" he wants to become, and the baseball clowns who came first
- Advice for players: there is opportunity beyond Division I, and there should be more to you than baseball
A Throwback Since Childhood
Polydoroff has been drawn to baseball history and vintage Americana since he was a kid, and he traces his love of 1950s and 1960s music to hearing "Earth Angel" in Back to the Future at about 12. Nobody handed it down to him — he and his younger brother are the only ballplayers in the family. His favorite player growing up was Honus Wagner, who died 50 years to the day before Polydoroff was born.
At 10 he opened a Christmas present from his dad and found Negro Leagues caps: the Indianapolis Clowns, the New York Black Yankees, and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. A decade later he is playing for a revived Clowns team. In high school, at a 6A Texas program with roughly 2,000 students, he was voted both best dressed, for wearing suits to class, and class clown.
Choosing Banana Ball Over the Draft
By his own description he had a decent but not certain shot at getting drafted — a second and third baseman who could hit, with a good arm and steady defense. What he did not have at Weatherford College was playing time. Two all-conference infielders returned ahead of him, and he sat for about a month and a half before getting a run of at-bats and going roughly 13 for 21 with two home runs, only to go back to the bench when the second baseman came off an ankle injury.
Sitting there, he kept circling the same question: how could he use all of it — the instruments, the languages, the impressions, the history? Three days before the Banana Ball tryout he called his old summer-ball coach and laid out the plan, which was to show up as a vintage ballplayer who winds up like an old-timer and throws the knuckleball. He also called being the youngest player ever signed before it happened.
"I quit regular baseball because I speak three languages and I play 12 instruments and I am the perfect candidate for Banana Ball."
The Signs Along the Way
He describes a run of moments that made the decision feel settled instead of risky. A craving for a snow cone took him to a shop off the main road where a giant banana car happened to be parked, and he asked its driver for 45 minutes so he could film a music video about becoming a Savannah Banana. On a team bus to New Mexico he wrote a lyric about Ray Charles, looked up, and a trailer for the Ray Charles biopic was playing on the screen. When the Clowns were announced, he went back to his closet and found the cap from that Christmas morning.
Why Banana Ball Takes the Pressure Off
Polydoroff credits Jesse and Emily Cole for the vision behind the league, and he thinks the format is what the game needs right now. He is also clear-eyed about what he sees happening to pro players online. Watching fans pile on a struggling young big leaguer, he thought about how much that would weigh on a person, and he contrasts it with a league where a player can attempt a trick play, miss it, and still walk off smiling.
"Banana Ball takes the pressure off the game. It reminds kids that you don't have to go four for four to have fun."
Old Knuckles and the Pitch
His grip is R.A. Dickey's: two fingers behind the horseshoe. The key, he says, is that the pitch is thrown with the same arm action as a fastball — younger pitchers try to push it with the arm — while the hand stops and the pointer and middle fingers push the ball out, taking the spin off so the air can move it on the way to the plate. He learned it from Dickey at spring training in 2014, at nine years old, catching it from about 40 feet away, and he still has the ball with the fingernail imprints on it.
Almost nobody wants to catch it. On nearly every team he has been on he has needed a designated catcher, because at full intensity the pitch is no fun to receive. He pitched one inning in college, in a 10-9 game in the 10th, and threw nine knuckleballs and one fastball to close it out on a night he also hit two doubles. He points to Phil Niekro's line that a good knuckleball can strike out a big league hitter at 58 to 62 mph, and to the fact that most knuckleballers do not get good at the pitch until their mid-30s, as the reason he likes his odds starting at 20.
A Renaissance Repertoire
His life has moved in phases: select soccer from about age five, baseball starting around eight, magic shows for 20 or 30 people at nine, then band and the saxophone in sixth grade. One of his coaches called him a band kid who learned how to hit a baseball, and he does not argue with it. He quit video games as a high school freshman, saved up as a sophomore to buy a tenor saxophone, and started recording Christmas music that his high school played over the lunch loudspeaker and later used for the bell between classes. He now has more than 50 songs out, speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish, and recently wrote a song with Dante Bichette Jr. for Brazil's World Baseball Classic team. A doo-wop group that tours singing 1950s street-corner harmonies is next on the list.
Intentional With the Hours
Asked how he finds time for all of it, he starts with what he does not do: no video games since his freshman year, and no aimless scrolling. He keeps content planned days out and ideas planned months out, runs everything off a calendar, and studies social media for at least three or four hours a week — collecting hooks and transitions the way a student collects notes. Evenings go to documentaries and books, right now Negro Leagues history and Clowns memorabilia, because Jesse Cole asked him to serve as the team's historian and he is taking the assignment seriously.
The brand itself started with one idea. Sitting in the outfield at a historic ballpark in Macon, Georgia, he thought it would be funny to capture the irony of a man in a 1940s wool uniform hitting in a modern training facility. That video and the ones after it have drawn tens of millions of views, and he has kept reinventing the bit since.
"You have to create something that no one has ever seen before."
Learning From Jesse Cole, and a New Kind of Pitcher
What stands out to Polydoroff about Banana Ball's founder is not the showmanship but the consistency of how he treats people, and how generous he is with his time for someone that busy.
"He treats the janitor like the CEO every single minute of the day."
He wants to be a pioneer for what he calls the comedic relief pitcher, and he has done the homework on the ones who came before. He points to Al Schacht, a former major leaguer who performed as a baseball clown between innings, and to Max Patkin, and to small period details he has picked out of old biographies, like players tipping their caps toward third base. He gets messages from players between 13 and 23 asking how he came up with the act, and his answer is that there is no act — waiting three more years to try it would have made it somebody else's idea.
Advice for the Next Generation
For players: Polydoroff is honest that the recruiting process is hard. He had Division I offers on the table as a sophomore, and he points out what tuition at those schools actually costs. His advice is that the level matters less than the fit, and that junior college and NAIA baseball are full of opportunity — play as long as you can, and find the place where you will actually play, because sitting and watching is the hardest part.
"There's a lot of baseball players that are one-dimensional out there. Don't be one of those guys."
He tells players to keep a hobby, a talent, or a trade that has nothing to do with baseball, because it will provide for them later. His own happened to be entertainment. His walkout song is "Sh-Boom" by the Chords, a 1954 record made by five guys singing on a Brooklyn street corner, and he has sung it himself in Savannah.
Episode Timestamps
Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.
- 0:00 — Introduction
- 2:04 — Where the vintage spirit and throwback style came from
- 4:48 — Choosing Banana Ball over the traditional route
- 8:02 — The youngest player ever signed, and a call three days before the tryout
- 11:12 — Signs along the way: a banana car and a Ray Charles trailer
- 14:44 — How Banana Ball takes the pressure off
- 16:10 — Old Knuckles: the key to a good knuckleball
- 18:16 — Learning the pitch from R.A. Dickey at spring training
- 19:44 — Nine knuckleballs to close out a college game
- 21:34 — High socks, vintage cleats, and a Renaissance repertoire
- 24:04 — No video games, no doom scrolling
- 27:52 — Calculated, methodical, and planning months ahead
- 30:09 — The people he surrounds himself with
- 34:00 — Being intentional with every day
- 36:15 — Fears, and the turn toward Banana Ball
- 39:47 — What the offseason and training look like
- 41:49 — Keys to content creation
- 44:41 — What he has taken from Jesse Cole
- 48:13 — A new genre: the comedic relief pitcher
- 49:17 — Advice for the next generation
- 51:20 — Walkout song: Sh-Boom by the Chords
Fisher Polydoroff is a vintage ballplayer, knuckleballer, and entertainment player for the Indianapolis Clowns of Banana Ball. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.