How Clemson turned football stadium into baseball field for Savannah Bananas
Two days after Clemson football played its spring game, facility crews were hard at work inside the venue, turning Memorial Stadium into something … very different.
Their tasks in recent weeks have included cutting out roughly half of the natural grass in the 81,500-seat stadium, spreading 200 tons of infield clay across one corner and installing a towering safety net in front of the visiting team bench area.
The end result is a baseball field caddy-cornered into Death Valley, a home plate that’s mere steps from where coach Dabo Swinney and the Tigers generally enter their locker room — and one heck of a venue for the Savannah Bananas.
Welcome to Banana Ball, Clemson style.
Everything comes together on Saturday as the Bananas, a wildly popular traveling baseball team from Savannah, Georgia, play in front of their largest crowd ever.
Tickets for the game at Memorial Stadium sold out in four hours back in January. Now the university is anticipating a full house of 81,500 people in Death Valley.
It’ll be the Bananas’ first time playing in a college football stadium, Clemson’s first sellout for a non-NCAA event at Memorial Stadium since the George Strait Country Music Festival in 1999 and the first baseball game on record at the venue.
As for the field itself?
“It’s a unique setup, but it looks awesome,” Eric Sabin, the Clemson athletic department staffer who spearheaded the field transformation, said Tuesday. “We didn’t short ourselves on how the setup was going to be done, from the field installation to the netting install. I mean, it is a playable baseball field.”
And don’t worry, football fans: Sabin said Clemson athletics “made a promise” to Swinney’s program that they’d have Memorial Stadium back in pristine condition, with fresh grass, a few weeks after the Bananas’ game and well ahead of the Tigers’ 2025 season and home opener against SEC power LSU on Saturday, Aug. 30.
Heading into the Bananas’ Saturday game at Clemson (7 p.m., ESPN2), here are more notes on how the school has turned its football stadium into a temporary baseball ballpark, how event revenue will be divided and what else to expect.
Creating a baseball field
Facilities staffers fully cut out the portions of the football field being used for the Bananas infield and recycled all of the leftovers (a mix of natural grass, turf and soil) in other areas within Clemson’s athletic district.
The athletic department bought 200 tons of red clay to spread across the makeshift infield. Turf was also installed in parts of the infield. The total estimated field resurfacing cost was $150,000, per spokesman Jeff Kallin.
When will the field be back to normal?
Work to turn Memorial Stadium back into a football field will begin as early as next Monday. Clemson crews will scrape out all the clay, cut up all the infield turf and do a full endzone-to-endzone grass replacement. Sabin said Clemson will be installing Ready Play Grass, a popular natural grass product that “allows us to set it down and start playing games on it just a few days later,” for the 2025 football season.
The home opener against LSU isn’t until Aug. 30, but the program will be holding portions of prospect camps inside the stadium starting in early June.
Finding home plate
One key part of the field design: Figuring out where home plate was going to be. Clemson brought in civil engineers it had used on previous field designs to mock up various fields and present them to the Bananas. To maximize the field space, the home plate had to be in a corner at a 90-degree angle. Starting in the west end zone made sense, too, since Clemson’s massive video board is in the east end zone.
The Bananas made the final call on the specific location of home plate, which is roughly in the front left corner of the west end zone at Memorial Stadium.
Safety netting
Clemson has installed a roughly 60-foot-tall safety net that extends from the right corner of the west end zone, past the 50-yard line and nearly to the 30-yard line on the opposite side of the field. That’ll protect fans who’d otherwise be in a direct line of fire down the third-base line in the shallow outfield.
Clemson is also surrounding the field with a backstop (behind home plate) and 360-degree wall padding around the field to further aid player and fan safety.
A very short left field
The dimensions of the field at Clemson, per the Greenville News: 325 feet from home plate to right field, 363 feet to right center and 190 feet to left field. Sabin refers to that spot as Clemson’s “short porch,” the area in a ballpark where it’s theoretically easiest to hit a home run. For context, the Boston Red Sox have the MLB’s shortest left field at 310 feet. That’s still almost two times farther than Clemson’s.
How will the money be split?
According to a contract for the event, obtained by The State via public records request, the Bananas will retain 100% of the net ticket revenue from general seating. Clemson’s main revenue streams for the event are the net ticket revenue from the stadium’s premium suite and club areas; parking; and concessions.
Most of those revenues will wind up covering Clemson’s expenses, since the school is opening, operating and providing security for the event (plus creating the field). As part of their agreement, Clemson did not charge the Bananas a facility rental fee. The university did receive 500 free general admission tickets.
Banana Beer
Alcohol sales are a go for the Bananas game, Sabin said, and fans can even buy a specialized “Banana Beer” at Memorial Stadium as part of Saturday’s offerings.
The school held off on selling alcohol at sporting events for years but started doing so early this month. Clemson sold alcohol at the football spring game on April 7, so it already has infrastructure in place for selling in Memorial Stadium.
Will Dabo show up?
What about special guests? Could Swinney, Clemson’s two-time national champion football coach, and other Tigers luminaries make an appearance? Sabin said that’s a Bananas decision, but he hinted there will be some “VIP guests” at the event, which could also feature the Bananas adopting some Clemson traditions.
