July 14, 2026, 10:03 a.m. ET
PHILADELPHIA — Tristan Peters’ path to his first MLB All-Star Game has included many stops along the way. One of those includes a brief 17-game stint at Historic Grayson Stadium, with a team whose owner wears a yellow tuxedo and top hat and whose players dance and do TikToks in the middle of games: the Savannah Bananas, of course.
Sure, the Bananas when Peters played for them weren’t the Bananas of today, having taken over the baseball sphere with their Banana Ball antics. Jesse Cole’s team was still a summer college baseball team in the Coastal Plain League. It doesn’t matter to Peters, though, now an outfielder with the Chicago White Sox. He was still a Banana. And no, he isn’t tired of answering questions about his time in Savannah in the summer of 2021.
“No, I look back very fondly,” Peters said Monday, July 13, at Citizens Bank Park ahead of the Midsummer Classic. “I think it really put the fun back in baseball because sometimes, especially in college, just trying to perform, you get focused on that. You’re not remembering that this is a game we’re blessed to be able to play.”
Were there viral TikTok dances when Peters was in Banana Country as the Coles were building the “Harlem Globetrotters of Baseball”? Yes, Peters said he occasionally busted a move.
But it was a fraction of what Bananas players do today — and yes, his White Sox teammates have found the videos. “They give me a hard time, but it’s all fun,” said Peters, who mentioned he played one game in the Banana Ball ‘s current format: a faster-paced format where entertainment is incorporated into the 11-rule, two-hour flat game. Drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the seventh round out of Southern Illinois University Carbondale that same summer, Peters faced an uphill road to the majors. He was traded twice within a span of a few months in 2022, first from Milwaukee to the San Francisco Giants, then from the Giants to the Tampa Bay Rays, where he made his major league debut last season. His stint with the Rays was brief, however, as he appeared in just four games before being designated for assignment in December and subsequently traded to the White Sox. Fast forward to 2026, and Peters has taken on a starting role with the White Sox. But to get to the South Side of Chicago, Peters, like many minor leaguers, had his share of moments where he questioned whether reaching the big leagues would ever happen.
“There’s so many, honestly,” Peters said. “I know when I got traded to the Giants, I had a really tough time adjusting to the AA level and the imposter syndrome too, being on a new team, not knowing anybody. And that still happens.
I’m starting to know a lot more people, which helps, but when I first got to the big leagues with the Rays, I went 0-for-12. Obviously that was tough. I’m like, ‘Can I actually do this?’ but I had to keep that belief in myself too.”
There were also times he questioned whether he could keep putting his family through the grind of minor league baseball, but he credits his wife’s unwavering support for helping him persevere. “She’s really the root of all (this).
She’s the reason I’m here,” Peters said. Peters finished the first half of the season with a .301 batting average and an OPS of .832 to go along with 75 hits, 20 doubles and 36 RBIs, helping turn one of Chris Getz’s under-the-radar acquisitions into an All-Star. “He kind of came out of nowhere, right?” White Sox manager Will Venable told The Athletic last week.
“We liked him, obviously, enough to acquire him. He’s exceeded expectations, and he’s done it in a way that it’s really neat for a guy who has worked so hard.”
So was there a moment that Peters knew, once he made the big league club out of spring training, this type of season could happen back in April or May? Not necessarily. “Think just knowing my role as a player,” Peters said. “… Then I slowly adjusted to big league pitching. And that’s a constant adjustment to be made too because they are pitching to you differently every day.”
He earned his first All-Star Game selection fewer than 24 hours after recording the third cycle this season in baseball, and the first by a White Sox hitter since Jose Abreu on Sept.
9, 2017, against the Giants. The Canadian native replaced Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz on the American League roster.
He was set to rent an Airbnb an hour away from Chicago with his wife and their baby, who was born during spring training, for a few days before he received that news. “We were just going to chill at a lake house, let our dog run around and maybe rent a boat or something like that,” Peters said. “Just chill.”
But an unexpected trip to Philadelphia for the All-Star Game, where he’ll come off the bench for the American League, is a pretty good reason to put that lake house on hold. “This is awesome. It’s really a highlight of my career already. To be a rookie here, I’m truly honored,” Peters said.
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