Billings Banana Ball Fans Tell AJ Kirsch “We Don’t Get Things Like This Here”

The Party Animals put on a second show at Dehler Park on Friday night, and so did the man walking the warning track afterward.

AJ Kirsch, the high-energy in-game entertainment host and emcee for the Party Animals, posted a video from the field just after his team closed out a 5-0 win over the Firefighters in game two of their three-game Banana Ball series in Billings. Game three is tonight, and after two nights of talking with fans here, Kirsch said one phrase kept coming back to him.

Billings Fans Keep Telling AJ Kirsch the Same Thing

"We don't get things like this here."

Kirsch said he heard some version of that line over and over from fans at Dehler Park, and it hit harder every time. He's spent about a year and a half as a host with Banana Ball, working crowds as big as 81,000 people, with plenty more in the 36,000 to 74,000 range. Billings is nowhere close to that scale, and that's exactly his point.

Dehler Park Is the Smallest Stop on the Banana Ball Tour

Dehler Park seats around 3,000, and with standing room and the berm included, Kirsch put the total capacity closer to 6,000. By his count, it's the smallest venue on Banana Ball's schedule this year outside of an unannounced pop-up show at a Texas high school field that wasn't even on the calendar.

Billings doesn't have a professional sports team. So when one of the hottest tickets in the country, by Kirsch's estimate around 630 to 640-plus sellouts, decides to make a stop here, it means something different than it would in a market that sees big shows all the time.

AJ Kirsch's Background Before Banana Ball

Kirsch isn't just a stadium emcee. Before joining the Party Animals, he competed on WWE Tough Enough and spent time as a professional wrestler, and it shows in how he works a crowd and reads a room. That background is part of why his read on Billings carried extra weight for me. He's performed in front of tens of thousands of people across the country, and he still singled out this small ballpark as one of the moments that's stuck with him.

What Banana Ball Means for the Billings Community

If roughly 6,000 people pack Dehler Park each night, that's close to 18,000 trips through the gate by the time this series wraps, meaning thousands of our neighbors got to be part of something Billings doesn't get very often.

We're hungry for this kind of thing here. Big-name entertainment doesn't often route through Montana, and when it does, people show up and show out.

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Game three is tonight at Dehler Park, and if Kirsch's read on this crowd is right, Billings is going to make it count for the third night in a row.