Cade Povich is sure there’s video of it somewhere, on someone’s phone, and it just hasn’t burst into the light of social media. The Orioles pitcher remembers that day five years ago, though, with fondness mingled with red-cheeked embarrassment.

He was in Savannah, Georgia, playing summer ball in 2020 with the Savannah Bananas. At that time, the now-famous club known for players on stilts and other shenanigans was a wood-bat college summer team in the Coastal Plain League. Povich, then at Nebraska, used that summer to improve his draft stock.

He also used that summer to step out of his comfort zone in a different way. While the Bananas of then were not the Bananas of now, they still did some Banana-y activities, such as fourth-inning dance performances from their players. Povich, a rather reserved young man, played a special role in one of those dances.

“Hopefully no one sees the video,” Povich said. “I’ve never been able to find the video.”

(If you have the video, please share the video.)

The “Running Man” challenge was still a thing. Povich was fairly accomplished at the viral dance craze. Savannah’s first-base coach — whose actual role was head choreographer and dancer — did some sort of fancy trick, then finished with a flourish on the ground. That’s when Povich jumped over the coach and produced the “Running Man.”

It’s burned in Povich’s mind, even if the video evidence remains at large.

“He’s more of an introvert,” Savannah head coach Tyler Gillum said. “And in Banana Land you’ve got to be an extrovert sometimes.”

Even before the Bananas were scheduled to arrive at Camden Yards, Povich was inextricably linked to the team. Banana Ball, as it is known, uses a unique set of rules with the mission of making baseball faster and more entertaining.

On June 26, 2020, the Bananas played their first Banana Ball game in front of fans. Povich threw in the game. Since then, Savannah has played almost 300 Banana Ball games, with sold-out crowds witnessing the excitement at NFL and MLB stadiums and, on Friday and Saturday, at Camden Yards.

“And Cade was in that first one,” Gillum said. “That was the first official Banana Ball game played in front of fans, June 26, 2020, and Cade was in it. How cool is that?”

Very cool. (Now find the video of Povich dancing!)

Povich threw one inning in that scrimmage, playing for the Yellow Bananas against the Green Bananas at Grayson Stadium in Savannah, Georgia. He struck out one batter and forced two groundouts in one minute and 10 seconds — they track the inning time in Banana Ball, by the way; the fastest inning on record is 46 seconds.

Almost that entire game, the players, coaches and the thousand-some fans wondered what the heck they were all doing. A walk turned into a home run because players needed to throw the ball to each position before they could tag the sprinting runner. There were all sorts of rules, and a game program helpfully spelled the intricacies out for fans: “Two Hour Time Limit,” “No Walks Allowed,” “If a Fan Catches a Foul Ball, It’s an Out.”

The Savannah Bananas had worked for a few years by that point to create Banana Ball rules. They held a 2018 scrimmage against Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. They realized at that point, “we’re on to something here,” Gillum said. “Guys like it. We’ve just got to evolve this thing.”

Povich, and his 2020 Bananas teammates, played more of a role in shaping how Banana Ball is played now.

“We were kind of like the test dummies,” Povich said. “We would do scrimmages with the rules they play with now to see how it worked and see if everything flowed right.”

That first game in front of fans showed the work required to make it the sensation it has become.

“We probably played five games, scrimmages with Banana Ball, with our summer guys, trying to learn and evolve what Banana Ball was,” said Gillum, who became Savannah’s head coach in 2018. “But everybody was still like, ‘What are we doing?’ Nobody knew what we were doing, really. Everybody was looking around like, ‘What rules are we playing? What’s going on?’”

Povich wondered it sometimes, himself. But that summer proved beneficial, for more than the seven games he pitched with a 2.05 ERA. Povich first met Gillum as a high schooler, when he was 5-foot-9 and weighed about 145 pounds “soaking wet,” Gillum said. Povich attended South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, where Gillum was an assistant coach.

That first year, Povich shot up like a beanstalk, soon looming at 6-foot-3. And he soon departed for Nebraska, where he started four games before the season was abandoned due to the coronavirus pandemic.

His plan to pitch in the Cape Cod League, one of the premium college summer ball circuits, ended there. But Gillum had given him an open invitation upon leaving South Mountain. If he ever wanted, Savannah would be a summer home for Povich.

“I wasn’t a showcase guy, really. I wasn’t throwing 98 and all this, so I needed to throw in games, and they were still open,” Povich said. “I thought, ‘OK, they’re one of the few leagues open. If I do well, maybe I can get in front of some scouts.’ So I asked if the invite was still open, and he said, ‘Yeah, of course.’”

But there was a caveat.

Could he dance?

“What we were doing, nobody else was doing it in sports, in baseball,” Gillum said. “The thing was, though, this wasn’t a random coach asking Cade to come do something. This was a two-year relationship that we created before, and me and his parents had a great relationship, so this was, ‘Hey, man, come pitch, come do it in front of big crowds. This will be a great projection for you to understand how to pitch in front of crazy crowds, and go back to Nebraska and potentially get drafted.’ It was all about development, and part of that is playing in front of more people and in crazy environments.”

Savannah is all about creating a fan-first environment.

Before games, Gillum expected his players to greet fans at the gates. They said goodbye at the end. During games, they danced on top of the dugout or on the field. All of that was unusual for Povich, who is often content in his own corner of the world away from the bombast.

“I know it got him out of his comfort zone to go, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go talk to some strangers,’” Gillum said. “And it probably helped him along the way, just getting more comfortable being outside his comfort zone.”

Looking back, Povich agrees. Standing on the mound in front of a raucous major league crowd is daunting. But does it really compare to dancing in front of thousands?

In the years since, the trajectories of Povich and the Bananas have flown upward. The Minnesota Twins selected Povich in the third round of the 2021 draft, and he made his debut with the Orioles last season. The Bananas have grown from cutesy novelty to national phenomenon.

They both helped each other on that path. To Povich, it was a chance to pitch in front of scouts during the coronavirus-interrupted summer of 2020. For the Bananas, he was a willing participant who appeared in the first official Banana Ball game with fans.

“It’s crazy to see where they were as a college team and how they’ve now exploded,” Povich said.

Added Gillum: “Him coming to the Bananas, dancing on the dugout, connecting with fans, being a Banana and being really good on the mound, too. His trajectory, I’m just so proud of him.”