The Banana Ball league, made up of baseball exhibition teams, is adding a team this year that has ties to two of Alabama’s most famous athletes – Hank Aaron and Leroy “Satchel” Paige. The Indianapolis Clowns is the latest team to join the league headed by the Savannah Bananas but it’s not a newly formed team – the Clowns played “trick” and exhibition ball beginning in the 1930s and at varying times boasted Aaron and Paige on its roster.
The rebirth of the once-famous Negro American League Clowns was announced by Banana Ball’s creator, Jesse Cole. “The most entertaining team in baseball history is back,” Cole said in a video on his Instagram.
“They were true pioneers when it came to combining sports and entertainment and we can’t wait to share their story and take their show to the next level in 2026!” Cole wrote in the post.
Cole mentions that baseball greats Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige both played for the Clowns, which was also the first men’s team to allow women to play. The Clowns, which became known as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, disbanded in 1989.
Aaron, born in 1934 in Mobile, Ala., was 17 years old when he joined the Clowns, according to an Oct. 20, 1973, article in The Mobile Press.
“With $2 in his pocket, carrying a battered suitcase and clutching two sandwiches his mother made for him, 17-year-old Hank Aaron boarded a train in Mobile in 1951,” the article said, although Aaron didn’t join the team until 1952. “He was about to join a barnstorming ball club, the Indianapolis Clowns.”
Aaron played with the Clowns only one season – 26 games – but he left his mark. Before being called to join the Boston Braves, which moved to Milwaukee in 1953, Aaron became the Clown’s top attraction, according to the Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball.
“They had posters made up with my picture on them,” Aaron was quoted in the Encyclopedia. “I even had top billing over King Tut and Spec Bebop, the guys who made the Clowns clowns.”
Aaron said he was asked to join the team a year earlier but his mother wanted him to finish high school.
“Downs came up and asked me how I’d like to play shortstop for the Clowns. Well, | knew Mama wouldn’t go for that one. I had to go back to school in the fall and try to stay there,” he said. “But anyway, Mr. Downs came home and talked to Mama and said that when school was out next year he’d send for me. I figured I’d never hear from him again.” In the spring of 1952, Aaron was signed to play for $200 per month. The veterans on the team didn’t think much of the teenager at first.
Paige, who was born in Mobile in 1906 and died in 1982, was a legend in the Negro Leagues and MLB. He was the first Negro leagues player to pitch in the World Series and he still holds the record for the oldest player ever called to the majors, making his debut with the Cleveland Indians when he was 42 years old. He would also play for the Kansas City Monarchs, the St. Louis Browns and the Kansas City Athletics, according to the Negro Leagues virtual museum.
Unlike the teenaged Aaron, Paige played for the Indianapolis Clowns at the end of his career, joining for a brief stint in 1967 when he was 61 years old, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Joining the Clowns
Hank Aaron shared his experience with the Clowns in the Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball.
“The Clowns didn’t think too much of rookies,” Aaron said. “They had a lot of veterans on the team, and they had won the Negro League championship the last couple of years without any 150-pound teenagers. I was just a nuisance to most of them, a raggedy kid who was in the way. They made fun of my worn-out shoes, and they asked me if I got my glove from the Salvation Army.”
And now the Clowns are back, bringing a long history of entertainment to the Banana Ball league, according to an October 2025 article by Billy Dunn for Sports Illustrated.
“This is so cool,” Dunn wrote. “The Indianapolis Clowns were doing what the Savannah Bananas have been doing a long time ago. They really paved the way for this style of baseball and it is incredible that they are going to joining the Banana Ball Championship League.