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IT’S THE MIDDLE of the sixth inning at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, the fourth-largest football stadium in the country, and the Savannah Bananas are leading the Texas Tailgaters 3-0. There’s a chance some in this throng of 102,000 came to College Station to watch great baseball in early May. But the majority, many of whom arrived at the stadium more than seven hours before game time, are here for what comes next.
Players from both teams sprint into formation as Diplo drops a beat from a set of turntables at second base. Country-hip hop influencer Adrien Nunez strides in from right field belting the opening line of a song he and the multitime Grammy winner just debuted at Stagecoach. Nunez drops to one knee as the Bananas’ dancing first-base coach, Maceo Harrison, jogs toward him, side flips over his head and lands in sync with the surrounding performers.
The crowd erupts. But what these fans likely don’t know is that Harrison taught the roughly 50 dancers on the field with him, including both teams’ players, every step of this routine yesterday. Before joining Banana Ball, few of them had any dance or theatrical training. Now, they perform with the polish of a seasoned touring company.
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That’s because Harrison deftly designs routines that emphasize charisma over technical precision and spotlight the teams’ natural showmen while camouflaging the players with two left feet. He also has the rare skill set — and patience — to teach dances to athletes who, not long ago, didn’t know an 8-count from a full count. Sometimes he has mere hours to choreograph and just as little time to teach his routines to the players.
“The greatest thing about Maceo is that he waits for everybody to get on the same page,” says Chris Clarke, the Tailgaters’ 6-foot-7 right-hander who played five years in the Chicago Cubs’ minor league system. “If there’s a right kick, he’s waiting for everybody to make that move before he goes on to the next instruction. Just like any good kindergarten teacher, he leaves nobody behind.”
Beyond the grand ensemble numbers, Harrison, 31, also designs player intros, walk-ups, pitcher’s mound dances and those home run cellies that go viral before the final out. He choreographs for the Man-anas — the Bananas’ “dad bod cheer squad” — and the Banana Nanas, their over-65 dance team. He’s taught outfielders to backflip and middle infielders to hit jazz counts. He’s coaxed even the most performance-resistant players into dancing like no one’s watching. He believes dance and self-expression have the power to heal. That’s something his mother imparted to him, and it’s an experience he’s lived through more than once.
“Everybody has their own heart drumbeat that they dance to,” Harrison says. “As long as you embrace it and show you’re having fun, that’s all that matters. Confidence is key. You have to be comfortable in your own skin.”
That lesson, Harrison says, took him years to learn, and it’s the key to teaching baseball players how to dance.
Harrison’s mother — a former gymnast and breakdancer — taught him acrobatic and dance moves in their front yard when he was young. “He’s been a stunt devil since he was 2,” Tammy Pack says. Courtesy of Maceo Harrison; Peter Yang for ESPN”SHOW THEM WHAT you’ve got,” the teacher says to Harrison, who is standing in front of a class at Coastal Performing Arts Academy in Pooler, a suburb of Savannah, Georgia. It’s 2012, Harrison is 17 and it’s his first day in a dance studio. He’s about to freestyle in front of a room full of students and teachers he’s never met. Until then, he had been mostly self-taught, recreating moves he saw on YouTube and in scenes from movies such as “You Got Served.” Three years ago, at 14, he auditioned for “America’s Got Talent” without any formal training.His only instruction has come from his mom, Tammy Pack, a cosmetologist and massage therapist who was a gymnast and breakdancer in her youth.”Maceo came home from middle school one day and mentioned, ‘Mom, can you teach me how to breakdance and flip?'” Pack says. She started taking him into the front yard and spotting him on back handsprings and eventually layouts and full twists. She showed him go-go and hip-hop moves and watched from the living room window as he practiced new skills until the sun went down.”He’s been a stunt devil since he was 2,” Pack says. “He flipped off the couch and broke his wrist. He jumped off the bed, broke the same wrist. Fell off the monkey bars. Broke it again.” She added pushups to his regimen, to strengthen those wrists.At school, Harrison played sports. He was a wide receiver on the high school football team and a point guard in basketball. He took musical theater, art and chorus and played baritone sax with the band. He was known in both circles for being a jokester, always ready with a slick comeback.”I enjoyed athletics, but sports never filled the void, that ‘why’ that makes you do what you do,” he says. Music and art came close but lacked the physicality he craved.”When he started dancing,” Pack says. “I told him, ‘You stepped into your purpose.'”Around his sophomore year, Harrison began performing in talent shows and freestyle battles.”That’s where I saw him, at a talent show,” says Dawn Kuster, owner of Coastal Performing Arts. “I had some dancers at the same event, and I went to watch them. But when I saw Maceo perform, I was amazed. I gave him my card and mentioned, ‘I would love to get you in the studio and connect you to the right people in the dance world.'” She offered him a full scholarship right there on the spot.A few days after that meeting, Kuster turns on the music and Harrison freestyles for the class.”I knew Dawn had talked me up to the other teachers,” Harrison says. “I didn’t want to disappoint her.”At the end of the hour, Kuster names Harrison to Coastal’s competition team. “That first day in the studio, I was like, ‘This is home,'” Harrison says. “It was an overwhelming feeling of, ‘This is where I need to be.'””That first day in the studio, I was like, ‘This is home,'” Harrison says of his dance origins. Courtesy of Maceo HarrisonHe took classes in ballet, tap, modern, ballroom, hip-hop and contemporary. “I grew to love the artistry and foundation of all styles of dance, even what I knew I wasn’t good at,” Harrison says. “I’m terrible at ballet, but ballet teaches you lines, posture, balance, flexibility, grace and how to transition from one move to another. I love studying ballet, but I look like a crane with arthritis when I perform it.”During competition season, Harrison thrived as a soloist, epically in hip-hop and freestyle, where dancers create choreography in the moment. “He came home with so many trophies,” Pack says.When he was 19, Kuster and several parents at the studio fundraised to send Harrison and another dancer to Las Vegas to audition for “So You Think You Can Dance.” Harrison made it to the third round.Being around other dancers provided Harrison with something he never felt fully in athletics: acceptance. “I heard it all — that I was feminine and flamboyant, that guys don’t dance, that I gotta be a tough guy,” Harrison says. He learned early how to protect himself when someone threw a jab. He answered with one of his own, making sure it was faster and funnier, ending the exchange before it went any further.”I can be tough,” Harrison says. “I’ve got grit. I’m originally from Baltimore. But being tough and being a man isn’t about having rough hands and being the biggest guy. It’s about being authentic.”It wasn’t always easy to live up to that standard while trying to make a career as a dancer. “I never felt I was expressing myself as much as I wanted,” he says. “Dancing is where I found out I’m a free bird. I’m weird. I wanted to be goofy, to dance with my tongue sticking out.” But there’s not always space for free spirits on a professional stage.”The greatest thing about Maceo is that he waits for everybody to get on the same page,” says former minor league pitcher Chris Clarke, who must learn Harrison’s choreography quickly with his Bananas teammates. Peter Yang for ESPNAfter high school and a year at East Georgia State College, where he planned to study physical therapy and follow his mom into massage work, Harrison quit school to go all-in on dance. He auditioned for TV and theme park shows and as a backup dancer while studying at Kuster’s studio, teaching hip-hop and choreographing for other studios around town. He thrived teaching kids, where he honed his philosophy that watering down a dance doesn’t mean talking down to students. “I tell all my students, ‘It’s alright. Be weird,'” he says. “When I see them laugh, I know their shell has opened. Now let’s play off that and get comfortable.”While auditioning and teaching, Harrison took side gigs as a valet at a hotel, a server at a fine dining restaurant and a stocker at a furniture warehouse, working as many as six jobs at a time to pay the bills and afford him the freedom to say yes to any dance opportunity that came his way. Life was a hustle. At home, his stepdad, Kendrick, harped on him to get a real job.”I’m from the city, but my husband grew up a country man,” Pack says. “He didn’t think dancing was work. I told him, ‘Dancing is hard work, just like singing or football or baseball. It’s his talent. He’ll make money one day.'”Sometimes the paycheck was the problem. Dance was becoming less about expression and more about fitting himself into whatever box the job demanded. The only time he felt truly himself was in the studio, choreographing, teaching and dancing with his tongue sticking out.”ONE AND TWO and three and four,” Harrison says, kicking his right leg, left leg, right …. “And turn … and bang!”It’s a Friday afternoon in the football practice facility at A&M. It’s pouring outside, but the forecast calls for sunshine and temps in the 70s for the next day’s game. Harrison is teaching the Bananas and Tailgaters the choreography for the dance they’ll perform with Diplo in fewer than 24 hours. This is one of the more complex routines Harrison’s designed this season, and they don’t have much time. They still have to take BP.About 20 minutes into the rehearsal, half of the players have picked up the choreography. When they run through the routine “full out” for the first time, catcher Bill LeRoy, who’s positioned directly behind Harrison, shows he’s a quick study. The guys in the back line, however, like designated hitter Dan Oberst, are taking longer to nail the moves. As if he has eyes in the back of his head, Harrison turns mid-routine and begins mirroring the moves for the players who are struggling. When the music stops, he walks to the center of the formation and runs through the routine slowly a few more times.”Without Maceo, I don’t think any of us would be dancing like this,” says Bananas designated hitter Dan Oberst. “He makes it simple and he makes us comfortable.” Peter Yang for ESPN”Two years ago, that rehearsal would have taken us four hours,” Bananas’ infielder Jackson Olson says. “And we did it in 30 minutes.”Olson played Division I ball at the University of Hartford and graduated in 2020, when Major League Baseball saw a reduced draft due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He played an additional year as a graduate transfer at Stetson, but when he went undrafted, he was crushed. He gave up on baseball and moved to California. He started a TikTok account where he shared the story of his broken baseball dream, his love for the game and his life delivering groceries around Los Angeles for Instacart.His videos caught the eye of MLB, which hired him to be part of their 2021 Creator Class, an initiative to boost engagement with younger fans. He spent the next year traveling the country reviewing MLB stadiums, embracing his inner extrovert and remembering how badly he wanted to play in those parks. After learning about the Bananas, he posted a couple of skits to attract their attention. Olson signed with the team in 2022. “I manifested this career,” he says.Despite his gregarious social media persona, IRL Olson was painfully shy and struggled to pick up Harrison’s choreography.”At first, he couldn’t remember two steps I taught him five seconds ago,” Harrison says. Now, he’s a front-row staple. He has more than 3 million followers between Instagram and TikTok. Two weeks after the Bananas’ game in College Station, “Dancing with the Stars” will announce Olson as a contestant for Season 35. “I’m a proud dance dad,” Harrison says.As with all his new students, Harrison eased Olson into dancing with short, personality-driven pieces like walk-ups that showcased his strengths as a performer. Harrison finds inspiration for his choreography on TikTok and in pop culture, by watching dance shows and movies and staying connected to the industry as a teacher and student.Olson says before he joined the Bananas, no one in his life, especially his parents and teammates, would have believed they would see him front and center dancing on TV. “I’m still not a great dancer,” the 28-year-old says, but he credits Harrison with helping him become the kind of performer who could catch the eye of a casting director from “Dancing with the Stars.”He also says his four years with the Bananas have taught him to embrace the same philosophy on the field that made him a social media star: “Don’t be afraid to be you, to put yourself out there and share what you love,” Olson says. “I loved Taylor Swift and Disney and musicals when I was in high school, but I never told anyone because I was like, ‘I’m a baseball player. I’ve got to be cool.’ Now I’ve realized it’s way cooler to show who you are. Everything I love, I’ve been able to showcase on the field as a Banana, and that’s not the case for a lot of athletes.”Bananas founder Jesse Cole hired Harrison to be the team’s mascot Split for the summer of 2017. Harrison became the team’s choreographer a year later. Peter Yang for ESPNLIFE IS GOOD. Well, stable, at least. It’s 2016 and Harrison is 21, still living outside of Savannah, teaching and taking classes, auditioning all around the south and traveling 2½ hours to north Florida as often as possible to spend time with his long-distance girlfriend, a ballet dancer he met while teaching at her studio. When she tells him she’s pregnant and later shares that they’re having a boy, Harrison is afraid but excited. The news kicks him into overdrive to start saving money so they can rent a place together and raise their son, who they plan to name Jace. Harrison earns a scholarship to a summer program to study hip-hop at the Joffrey Ballet in New York City. He can see the future he is shaping for himself and his budding family.”He was so excited and I just knew he was going to be a good daddy,” Pack says. About four months into the pregnancy, Harrison calls his mom and tells her something is wrong and he needs to go to Florida. She doesn’t ask questions at the time, but when he calls two days later to tell her they lost the baby, she remembers the pain in his voice.”He wanted to know why. Why did this happen?” Pack says. “I mentioned, ‘Things just happen.’ It was hard. … There was nothing I could tell him other than, ‘Every day, it gets better. Focus on something you love, something that will bring you peace. And never forget him.'”Harrison takes those words to heart. He has Jace’s name tattooed on the inside of his left forearm. He starts meditating and praying each morning. But he can’t pull himself out of the darkness. He and his girlfriend end their relationship, and he starts dealing with depression and health issues. Some days, he feels like he’s having a heart attack. He’s diagnosed with stress cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscles triggered by intense emotional or physical stress. The condition, which is reversable, is also known in medical circles as takotsubo syndrome or, perhaps more pointedly, broken heart syndrome.”I was down bad, like my feet were in Hades,” Harrison says before practice in College Station. He taps his toes on the concrete for emphasis. “I knew if I wanted to heal, I would have to dig myself out of that dark place. That’s when I switched to positive energy always. I wanted to be a positive light. You receive what you give out.”He starts vocalizing his dream to be a well-known choreographer. His break might be close, he believes. He can’t quit now. He’s heard so many stories of performers who almost gave up but then landed the job they had been striving for their whole lives. “What if the universe was this close to having you at your dream and you gave up?” he says. “I just lifted my head up and kept going, kept believing.”The break he had been chasing was closer than he knew. In the spring of 2017, Harrison’s friend Darius, a dancer he had met on the competition circuit, calls and asks if he wants a summer gig.Harrison performs for 102,000 people at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field earlier this month. Peter Yang for ESPN”He was like, ‘My boss is looking for a dancing Split. Would you be interested?'” Harrison says. “I was like, ‘A what?'” His friend explains that Split is the mascot for a new summer college baseball team called the Savannah Bananas. “He mentioned, ‘I can put a meeting together with you and our owner, Jesse, and he’ll explain it all,'” Harrison says.He is in no position to turn down work, so Harrison drives to Grayson Stadium. Jesse Cole and his wife, Emily, had purchased the Savannah franchise in the Coastal Plain League a year earlier and rebranded the team as the Bananas. The club won the league championship in its first season and broke the CPL attendance record with a unique mix of solid baseball and engaging entertainment. Cole, known for his ubiquitous yellow tuxedo and top hat, shows up to meet with Harrison in character.”I was like, ‘Who is this guy?'” Harrison says. “It’s Savannah in summer. He must be hot in that suit. But I loved the passion in his eyes. You could tell his brain was full of ideas. I mentioned, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ I got into the banana costume. I’m dancing with these big ol’ shoes on, smiling in the costume, knowing I didn’t have to smile. I made $25 a game. When the season was over, I forgot all about it.”A year later, Darius, the Banana’s original dancing first-base coach, calls again. He’s leaving for college in Washington D.C. and believes Harrison would be his perfect replacement. “You just have to entertain the fans and teach the players to dance,” he says. He tells Harrison the role can be anything he makes of it. Harrison is still struggling emotionally and financially and something tells him this job is about to change his life.”After my second game, I was sold,” he says. “I saw the way we made people feel. I saw that this had potential to be something big. And back then, we didn’t even have players who were willing to dance. Dan Oberst used to tell me he’d break my legs if I made him dance,” Harrison says. “And he does jujutsu.””When he started dancing,” Harrison’s mother says, “I told him, ‘You stepped into your purpose.'” Peter Yang for ESPNDIPLO AND NUNEZ dance toward home plate as the performers prepare for the finale to their banger sixth-inning performance. Harrison is up front with the musicians, so he can’t see that behind him, the players are selling his routine. Back in Savannah, Kuster watches ESPN2 from her studio. Harrison’s mom, stepdad and siblings are also watching on TV as Harrison dances out his wildest dreams.Olson, as usual, is up front, flanked by guys such as pitcher Jacob Bazala, who grew up taking classes in his mom’s dance studio in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and Derek Klena, a Tony-nominated Broadway star who played ball at UCLA and joined the Bananas this season. And there, dancing in the back row, is Oberst.An All-American at the University of West Georgia, Oberst joined the Bananas while still in college in 2019, when the team was playing baseball instead of its signature, fast-paced version of the sport. Oberst is tall and muscular, has long hair and tattoos and is known for playing with thick eye black covering both of his cheeks and the sleeves ripped off his unbuttoned jerseys. He’s also become a hip-shaking regular in the Bananas on-field dance numbers and social media skits.”I’m not that nervous anymore to dance,” Oberst says. “But without Maceo, I don’t think any of us would be dancing like this. He makes it simple and he makes us comfortable. He’s the best at what he does.”Harrison says of all his success stories, he’s proudest of Oberst’s turnaround and what it means for the men and young boys who fill these stadiums to see him crushing home runs one moment and expressing himself the next.”Dan came from being this tough guy and yeah, he’s in the back, but he’s got the moves down,” Harrison says. “I love that we’re showing that athletes, that baseball players, can dance. It doesn’t make you less of a man if you dance. It doesn’t make you less of a man if you knit. It doesn’t make you less of a man if you do anything you’re passionate about. You go tell Dan Oberst he’s less of a man for dancing. I’ll wait.”
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