In the world of sports, few things unite a fan base like an unlikely comeback.
They become a thing of legend; a lore that unites generations and spawns countless “I was there when” stories.
The chronicle of Mississippi State’s 2018 baseball season is one of those tales of revival that Bulldog faithful know as a program-defining rebirth.
A preseason College World Series favorite, the Diamond Dawgs’ season quickly unraveled. A rocky start and early-season leadership change sent the Bulldogs spiraling, leaving them at the bottom of the Southeastern Conference standings—a place unfamiliar and uncomfortable for one of college baseball’s most consistent and prestigious programs.
Miraculously, halfway through the season, the team rallied, making their way to the Tallahassee Regional.
With their backs against the wall, a potassium-filled comeback was in the making. With Elijah MacNamee at the plate, down to his final strike and the team’s final out, sophomore shortstop Jordan Westburg quietly sat in the dugout. Then, he took one of the bananas being passed around as a snack and placed it on his head, aiming another toward the baseball as a radar gun.
With that moment of levity, the team got looser and more hopeful. Almost on cue, as with the birth of every sport superstition, MacNamee hit a game-ending, three-run, walk-off home run. Bulldogs in the dugout and across the country went, well, bananas.
Armed with what became known as the “rally banana,” Mississippi State caught fire.
The Bulldogs surged through the Tallahassee Regional, captured the Nashville Super Regional and punched their ticket to Omaha. What once felt improbable was suddenly very real.
In baseball, superstition is sacred. If it’s not a banana, it’s a ballcap turned inside out or only drinking purple Gatorade when you really like red. It’s doing anything and everything to make sure the wind blows the perfect way to let that walk-off homerun get over the wall. And in 2018, for some reason, that single banana fueled a nationwide surge in love for everything banana as the fan base embraced a superstition that, along with Bulldog grit, brought them to the College World Series.
With the Dawgs coming to Omaha, MSU 1987 banking and finance graduate De Lone Wilson knew he had to do his part. Since 2014, he has served as president of Cubby’s, a convenience store chain with locations across Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota, and since he had the connections, he felt a responsibility to “Dole” out support for his Bulldogs.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of time to prepare and when we watched Mississippi State advance my wife looked at me and said, ‘We need to give away bananas,’” he recalled.
So they did. With a Cubby’s location conveniently located next to CWS home Charles Schwab Field, Wilson purchased thousands of bananas to arm Maroon and White faithful with the full-“Del Monte.”
“We ordered way too many bananas,” Wilson said with a laugh. “But I told my manager to give away bananas to anybody with a Mississippi State hat, shirt, jacket or whatever. We gave away a ton and then donated the rest to area homeless shelters.”
While Mississippi State has made plenty of trips to Omaha, few teams have embodied grit quite like the 2018 Bulldogs. The Diamond Dawgs won two early games and nearly made it to the championship—farther than any fans anticipated. They battled through adversity, weathered leadership changes and refused to let a brutal start define them.
It may not have ended with a title, but it came remarkably close. And just three seasons later, several of those key players helped capture the university’s first baseball national championship.
Fans will always remember 2018 as the season of the banana, but it wasn’t really about the fruit. It was about a group of college kids trusting each other, absorbing every punch and delivering fans back home an unforgettable ride.
