Savannah Bananas' Mat Wolf throws between his legs, with or without pants, for strikes

Oklahoma City firefighter Mat Wolf has passed time in the firehouse in conversations about his skills as a juggler and the old days playing baseball in high school and college.

"I've always said I'm pretty good at stuff that don't get me very far in life," Wolf said, including doing handstands among his hidden talents. "I'm hoping I don't ever have to say that again."

That's because Wolf, on his 34th birthday last Friday, suited up for the Savannah Bananas Premier Team, a professional traveling baseball squad that's a spinoff of their summer collegiate league team's more conventional baseball games.

As a right-handed pitcher and infielder, Wolf is able to use a lot of that "stuff" — including juggling, handstands and over 20 trick pitches that he's developed just messing around over the years at ballparks — in the team's entertainment-driven, very unorthodox brand of "Banana Ball."

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"This is unlike anything else in baseball," said his wife Magean Wolf, who with her husband and their daughter Raylee, 2 in May, are staying in Savannah for the travel team's spring schedule into May.

"It gives Mat a chance to truly be himself. He loves to be goofy and he loves to play the game. It's the best of both worlds. We love it here."

Mat Wolf is taking time off from his firefighting duties, as he annually has done in the spring to be an assistant baseball coach at a local high school and college.

"I can't think of a better vacation," he said.

It was Magean, a former softball player at Oklahoma City University, who encouraged her husband to try out last month for the Banana Ball rosters — either the Premier Team or its in-house foils, the Party Animals. The former broadcasting major videotaped him pitching and did the catching herself, then submitted the video to the Bananas.

For his sake, Mat thought he was too old and didn't want to embarrass himself. He hadn't picked up a baseball in years as a player — most recently in 2010 as an infielder and one of the leading hitters at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.

Ada is the hometown of Tyler Gillum, who played at ECU and was a graduate assistant coach in 2010. Gillum, a year older, and Wolf knew each other growing up playing ball in Oklahoma. Gillum has been the head coach for the past four seasons of the Bananas amateur college team, including the 2021 Coastal Plain League championship squad.

The Wolfs had visited Savannah in the summer to check out their friend's team and witnessed the show that has packed Grayson Stadium (excluding pandemic-impacted seasons) since 2016.

"You were made for this," Magean told her husband.

Indeed, Mat Wolf IV has entertaining — and firefighting — in his blood. He comes from generations of firefighters as well as family that worked in rodeos. His father was a fireman who had a sidelight as a rodeo clown, which is why his son donned custom-made suspenders and oversized, baggy pants for the tryout and games.

"I'm just trying to carry on all the legacies of the Mat Wolfs," said Mat the Fourth, who grew up on the family ranch in Joy, a rural community so small, he said it doesn't have a stoplight or even a stop sign.

"We ended up having to sell that ranch. We're not ever going to get that back. I'm thinking, 'Well, how can I carry on our legacy somehow?' That's why I'm wearing the rodeo pants. That's why I'm a fireman."

Now he's also a Banana, and perfect for a roster filled with former college and professional players. He has a particular set of skills with the ability to throw strikes from different arm positions, including from between his legs in a trick pitch he calls "the Banana Split."

He will drop his pants for a laugh

The "Abracadabra" includes a hidden-ball trick on the batter as he flips the ball around his left leg and pins it out of sight behind his left knee before slipping it back into his right hand and firing home.

Another pitch starts with a traditional windup but then he launches his cap high into the air and throws while it's in the batter's line of sight. Probably not legal, but not against the rules in Banana Ball.

"I call that the Blinder just because I'm really trying to blind the batter a little bit with the hat," Wolf said. "It's distracting. I try to put a creative name to it as well."

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Wolf mixes fastballs and off-speed pitches with trick pitches with names such as the Electric Slide, the Professor, the Panty Dropper (when he drops his baggy pants), the Spinarama, the Showstopper, the Split Single Axel, Around the Town, Backdoor Roller Coaster, Satchel to Satchel, the Pop 'n' Lock, the Runaway Bride, Texas Tornado, Cat in the Hat, Price is Right and Donkey Kong.

Wolf has so many trick pitches that he keeps a card with a handwritten list on his wrist, like a quarterback with football plays.

"He's now my favorite baseball player of all time," said right-handed pitcher Kyle Luigs, who played four seasons for the Bananas college team and is a teammate on the Premier Team.

"It's changing the game of baseball," Luigs said of Wolf's arsenal of pitches. "It's a very cool take on it. It's another one of those situations for not taking yourself or the game too seriously. As a counterintuitive byproduct of that, you tend to succeed or do things well. It's definitely something nobody else is doing — I'm pretty confident in that."

Nobody else has a pitch Luigs invented himself two weeks ago and passed along to Wolf. Luigs was in a rehearsal game and before the first pitch squated down to pretend to tie his shoes, only to collect his glove and baseball, pop up and hurl the ball to home plate.

"Honestly, I didn't do it very great. I think I spiked a fastball into the dirt to start the game," Luigs said of the "Kyle Shoelace" pitch. "Just messing around with stuff like that. I showed him. He did it a lot better than I did, and I think it's part of his repertoire now."

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Take pity on his catchers

If batters have a hard time picking up the pitch upon release, consider the poor catchers. They don't know where the pitch is going, either.

"Wolf throws a knuckleball from all of the different (arm) positions, and it's insane," said teammate Janson Neff, who was the bullpen catcher Saturday when Wolf made his debut.

Neff said catching Wolf is harder than his day job as a Savannah police officer.

"For sure," Neff said Saturday night. "That was wild. He does things that I didn't think a baseball player could do throwing a ball, and he still throws hard. I don't understand. He probably throws in the 80s and has some zip to it and gets on you quick. He just busted out a new one (pitch). He does a handstand and threw it, essentially, upside down and it was a strike."

Wolf couldn't throw the Texas Tornado — named for a karate kick he learned as a kid — because he had pulled a hamstring last week, then tweaked his groin in the bullpen before pitching one inning on an unseasonably cold Saturday night.

"I haven't been doing this in a while and jumped right in it," the 5-foot-7, 160-pound Wolf said after the game. "I'm either going to have to get tough or get healthy — one of the two."

Wolf maintained a constant grin throughout the interview and whenever he's on the diamond — apt for a man from Joy. He had just played in front of, and entertained, the largest crowd of his life, more than 4,000 spectators.

"More than anything, I just wanted to get a laugh or two," Wolf said. "Do something different. That's kind of what the Bananas are all about. See some smiles. I'm a competitor at heart; I wanted to get some strikeouts, too, and maybe win the inning. Unfortunately, I didn't get that. But, hey, as long as we get some smiles and laughs, that's all that really matters."

Nathan Dominitz is the Sports Content Editor of the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Email him at ndominitz@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @NathanDominitz

On the web

For video of Mat Wolf pitching, see this article at savannahnow.com/sports.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah Bananas baseball team trick pitcher Mat Wolf tricks opponnets