“Don’t be afraid to be you” is the motto of Tik Tok star, social media influencer, and Savannah Bananas’ third baseman Jackson Olson.
Currently, he has over 733 thousand followers on Tik Tok, and 133 thousand followers on Instagram.
He was born and raised in New Milford, Connecticut. During his junior year of college, playing in the Cape Cod League, he was approached by a baseball scout.
“In the first two weeks, I was hitting well and playing well. There were scouts everywhere, because of the Cape Cod league, and one of the scouts reached out to me through email, and said, ‘Hey, man, love, love how you play, we’ll keep in touch.’ I didn’t hear from him for like, five days, then he was like, we have an offer for you if you want to sign.” said Olson. “I called my coach and said ‘coach, I’m gonna sign, this is the coolest thing ever,’ and I called my dad, and said ‘I’m going to sign.’ They told me to just wait, and to go back to my senior year, play, get my college degree, and that I’d get signed next year. I said, ‘okay,’ and then COVID hit, and there was a five-round draft instead of a 40-round draft, which means that the draft was cut by 75%. That kind of crushed all my dreams.”
With his baseball dreams seemingly going up in smoke, he began doing odd jobs for money and saving to continue following his dreams, despite the deck stacked against him.
“I was delivering groceries for Instacart in New York City, and also Connecticut a little bit. I started in quarantine but did it last year to a year ago. I was literally delivering groceries and had both grocery bags on the side of my Citi-bike riding through New York City with millions of cars and trains and buses. It was not fun, but I had to make money,” said Olson.
Olson was making Tik Toks about baseball for fun, which he started in 2019 during college.
“I just started it in my locker room one day, made a video and it got like 100 views and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ 100 views seemed like a lot to me at the time, and then it kept going. My first like, 20 videos got that same amount. Then one video, that was about playing baseball in the cold, got 100,000 views. Some of my friends were freaking out, some of my friends were like, ‘this is the dumbest thing ever. ‘They would talk down to me about it,” said Olson.
His increasing popularity on Tik Tok would reach the eyes of the MLB, who would soon offer him a deal, allowing him to quit Instacart and to get back into something he loved doing.
“MLB reached out to me and asked me to be an MLB content creator. I said yes, and I ended up going to seven stadiums last year, making a bunch of Tik Toks about going to the MLB headquarters and stadiums,” said Olson, “Then this year, I got to work with Gametime and go to 20 major league baseball stadiums in two months going to sometimes eight games in nine days.,” said Olson.
Randomly over the summer, Olson made a video about the Savannah Bananas; the next day, Jesse Cole, (the owner) reached out to him and asked him if he would like to create content and play third base for the team. Olson agreed and played from August through September, and will be continuing to play with the Bananas all of 2023, going on tour with the team.
“I think in my future, I mean, with working with social media now playing for Savannah Bananas, entertainment is a huge part of what I do. I think that maybe being an on field host or an MLB analyst, or something, where I’m still on camera and still can be creative, or potentially starting my own company, because I have a lot of ideas that I don’t get to make happen yet because of finances, but I’m going to continue social media and baseball for as long as I can,” said Olson.
Follow Olson and his antics on Tik Tok @jacksonolson_
