With Monday’s announcement, the Savannah Bananas are living up to their name: They’ve finally gone bananas, as in crazy.

That’s the reaction owner Jesse Cole and his baseball team at Grayson Stadium are expecting with their decision to remove all advertising from the premises when the season starts this summer.

"No signage, no announcements, no nothing," said Jared Orton, president of the Bananas, entering their fifth year in the Coastal Plain League, a collegiate summer league. "We're giving the stadium back to the fans and back to the history of Grayson Stadium."

Orton, Cole and director of operations Jonathan Wood got out the tools Monday to take down the billboards on the outfield wall. The signs will be returned to advertisers, who were on year-to-year contracts, Orton said.

"We feel that we will get some very interesting phone calls and emails: 'What the heck are you guys doing?’ " Orton said.

The team knows about getting and keeping attention locally and nationally, and has developed a loyal following with 88 consecutive sellouts (about 4,200 per game) at the stadium on Victory Drive.

But this is an idea that appears to have come out of left field. By the way, the left-field wall will have a tribute to the history of baseball at Grayson from 1926 to present day, while right field will have a "Fan Wall" that fans can sign before and after games.

"For us, it always starts with, 'What are those things that are frustrating at a ballpark, what are those friction points in the fan experience and how can we eliminate those?' " Cole said.

Living up to his company’s name, Fan First Entertainment, Cole has looked at minor league baseball from a fan’s perspective and tried to improve the experience. Games are more than about baseball. It might even be secondary to the entertainment angle.

"Ultimately, we want to be the most fan-centric company in the world," Cole said. "How can we provide the best fan experience in the world?"

Orton said consumers are opting to avoid advertising in the way they watch TV and movies and listen to the radio, even if it means paying more for a subscription service.

The Bananas are, perhaps, getting ahead of the curve when it comes to live-action sports. So starting this season at the end of May, fans won’t see ads in the stadium or in the game program, or hear them over the speaker system.

Team officials said they won’t be trying to make up the difference with higher costs to fans.

"We're not raising any ticket prices. We're not adding games. We're adding to the experience," Cole said of this addition by subtraction.

"This is no negativity toward our previous sponsors," Orton said. "We're thankful for them. They were the ones who believed in us and got us going."

Cole declined to provide specific details of how much this policy will cost the team.

"It was about 10 to 20% of our total revenue. Most teams, it's 50% plus," said Cole, who formerly owned another CPL team in Gastonia, N.C. "We are fortunate (in that) a lot of teams (in the league), 50% of their revenue is ad revenue (while) we were at a much smaller percentage.

"Everything for us is about the fans. We are a volume business. It's not huge margins, but with 4,000 people showing up, it works out OK. For us it was minimal risk. It's a huge risk ... in the industry. That's crazy. Even if we don't recoup any of it, we're still OK. But we think we're going to create long-term fans. We prefer long-term fans over short-term profits."