Each year in Bananaland, players work tirelessly to push the boundaries of what is possible on a diamond.
From backflips to bat flips, to in game acrobatics, fans never know what they could see at a Banana Ball game. One guarantee is that they will see trick plays, and a lot of them. This past tour, in fact, 1,358 trick plays were completed between the Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters and Visitors. With the addition of a new team, the Texas Tailgaters, the 2025 Banana Ball World Tour is sure to have even more.
Though multiple players were responsible for the record-breaking season, there’s one that reigns above the rest. After all, there’s only room for one Glove Magician, and that title is reserved for Ryan Cox.
The Magician has been making waves and trick-playing his way into Banana Ball history for years now. His flare and ability to create poetry in motion has continued to elevate the game of Banana Ball.
He didn’t start his journey in Bananaland as the Glove Magician, though.
They say you never forget your first, and that’s especially true for Ryan, who vividly remembers his first trick play in 2022.
“I was super stressed out,” Ryan said of his first trick play, an under the leg transfer in 2022. “When everything worked out, there was just this massive weight off of my shoulder. I realized that we could do these things in a game.”
Though his initial fear was squashed in Columbus, GA, it was now time for Ryan to learn how to integrate routine trick plays into his performance, and that proved to be a learning curve.
In fact, heading into the 2023 season, he had less than ten trick plays under his belt. Even so, it was apparent to everyone witnessing the infielder’s athleticism that he would be a catalyst in aiding Banana Ball’s ability to grow into the sport it is today.
It was only right that this ample potential was paired with a name that fans could remember. For that, Ryan drew inspiration from the players he looks up to, like AND1 and NBA player Jason Williams, commonly referred to as “The Professor.” He thought about Javier Báez, the shortstop for the Detroit Tigers, and that’s when, though he didn’t know it yet, Ryan had struck gold.
“Javi Baez was El Mago for a while, which is ‘the magician’ in Spanish,” Ryan said. “I thought about it and said, ‘Well, Glove Magician, that makes sense.’”
There’s no better name for Bananaland’s trick play extraordinaire.
So, how did Ryan come to embody that name?
Well, while there was a ton of hard work involved, imagining what a trick play could look like has actually been pretty simple.
Ryan draws inspiration for trick plays from some of basketball’s greats. The way they effortlessly glide a ball up and down the court while dribbling in between their legs and swiftly past defenders is exactly what Ryan aims to emulate in a Banana Ball game.
“I always wanted to dribble like the AND1 guys and have all the fancy moves,” Ryan explained. “I’ll go back and watch all of those videos.”
He also draws inspiration from his teammates who, like him, are constantly working on perfecting and creating trick plays of their own.
“We have twenty infielders doing this every day, so it’s cool to kind of be taking pieces of everyone’s moves and making them into your own,” Ryan said. “It’s like an art class that we’re all taking together. The picture is going to be similar, but everyone’s going to put their own brush to it.”
All of that inspiration paired with countless hours of hard work has pushed Ryan to be a consistent front runner in terms of executing trick plays. In 2023, he became the first Banana Ball player to reach 100 of them.
“I didn’t know it then, but the entertainment team had planned this big moment for when I reached 100,” Ryan said. “All of my teammates were in on it and they came out to the field and celebrated. It still gives me chills, like it’s an emotional thing to think about. You want to celebrate yourself, but for them to be celebrating me as well, that meant the world.”
With the support of his team, he continued to push his abilities further, and it didn’t take long for him to become the first Banana Ball player to reach 200 trick plays. Ryan ultimately ended the 2024 season with 207 trick plays and was crowned Trick Play King of the Year.
Ryan has maintained consistent trickery in Bananaland, and while he finds inspiration from his teammates, they’re pretty inspired by him too.
“When I first got here he told me, ‘It’s all about a flow state of mind. You’re not really preparing for anything but you know what you have.’ That’s stuck with me from the minute I met him,” teammate KJ Jackson said.
“He leads by example,” KJ explained. “He’s super creative, and he’s always open to doing new tricks. He never sticks himself into a specific category, and I think a lot of fans really resonate with that.”
Ryan has continued to push the boundary of what is possible in Bananaland, and his perseverance and determination in creating new ways to be dominant on the field is paving the way for not only current Banana Ball players, but for all the ones who will come after.
“I think the core of a trick play is the 11 or 12-year-old kid who’s taking a million ground balls and just needs a break to have some fun,” Ryan said. “Think of a trick play as a play with no constraints. Any way that you can record an out and have some fun with it, the interpretation is yours.”
The Glove Magician has set a precedent; that Banana Ball without trick plays is like Jesse Cole without his yellow tux. You really can’t have one without the other.
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