In case you missed it, the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres have announced they will play annually for the “Vedder Cup” in their season rivalry series beginning this season. The Vedder Cup is of course named for Eddie Vedder, a rock and roll hall of famer, multi-Grammy award winner, rock legend, and one-time resident of both San Diego and Seattle.
According to MLB, “The Mariners-Padres series has been playfully referred to as the Vedder Cup for years. With six matchups between the two clubs in 2025, Seattle and San Diego will formalize the moniker with the winner of the season series taking home the Vedder Cup trophy, featuring a guitar provided personally by Vedder.”
Eddie Vedder is a baseball fan and also the frontman for legendary band Pearl Jam, who lived in San Diego in his youth, later moving to Seattle where he achieved musical superstardom with PJ. He’s been on many a major league field, and has been known for throwing out a few first pitches over the years.
You may be asking, “Why the ‘Vedder Cup’ and why do two baseball clubs located more than 1,000 miles apart and in two different leagues even have a rivalry?”
It all goes back to the beginnings of Interleague play, when MLB began to play up “natural rivalries” — which works great for Mets/Yankees, Dodgers/Angels, Cubs/White Sox, and (then) Oakland/San Francisco and a few others — but left several teams without such close proximities to other clubs without any real true rivals. So when MLB began having “natural rivals” meet twice a season, Seattle and San Diego ended up as square pegs forced into round holes by the League. About the only connection the two baseball cities shared in common is both use the same Spring Training complex in Peoria, AZ.
So when MLB decreed the Pads/M’s to be “natural rivals,” fans and beat writers began searching for a connection to create a rivalry, and apparently, two Padres beat writers in the early days of the social media app formerly known as Twitter took to the masses to seek a name for this rivalry.
“We never thought of it like anything serious,” said Dan Hayes, who covered the Padres for the North County Times at the time. “We were just messing around on the internet. The thought of where it is now is amazing. It’s incredible.”
It may have been a stretch, but eventually writers, fans and even the teams came to link the two cities together via Vedder, the onetime resident of both Seattle and San Diego. Thus, the “Vedder Cup” rivalry series came to fruition, and its roots date back to at least 2011.
@AIChief_AJM @NCTPadres @RjsFro The Battle for the Vedder Jug: The Next Chapter
— Geoff: Friar Aficionado (@LeftCoastBias) March 20, 2011
The annual series between the Mariners and Padres thus had informally been known as the Vedder Cup, but for 2025, both teams — with the approval and support from Eddie himself — have now formalized the Interleague competition.
As part of the annual series, Seattle and San Diego will also partner to support EB Research Partnership, a charity co-founded by Eddie and Jill Vedder as a trailblazing nonprofit organization dedicated to funding research to discover treatments and cures for Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). Each club issued a statement in recognition of the new “official” rivalry.
Mariners Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Trevor Gooby said “We are thrilled that we were able to bring the Vedder Cup concept to life in such a fun and impactful way. Creating and sharing memorable events like this with Mariners fans is extremely gratifying, and I am very thankful for Eddie, his team, EB Research Partnership and the Padres in sharing the Mariners vision and commitment to celebrating and serving the Seattle community.”
Padres CEO Erik Greupner said “We’re proud to partner with the Mariners and Eddie Vedder to announce the creation of the Vedder Cup, a special interleague rivalry series that celebrates the unique connection between our cities through the rock legend and Pearl Jam frontman. This West Coast showdown will create some cool, fun, and memorable moments for our fans while bringing meaningful awareness to EB research. We can’t wait to see this rivalry series grow and look forward to battling the Mariners for the Vedder Cup.”
In the first formal edition of the Vedder Cup, the Padres will host the Mariners May 16-18, before games in Seattle August 25-27. Both clubs will host Vedder Cup theme games, and merchandise for the event will be available at both team stores.
It doesn’t get Vedder than this 🎸 pic.twitter.com/Xmpdswyo3B
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) March 15, 2025
Per MLB, here are the Vedder Cup Highlights:
- Vedder Cup Trophy – The Vedder Cup trophy will be created with Vedder’s input to include a guitar provided by the rock legend himself. The trophy will be unveiled later during the 2025 season, prior to the first matchup between the two clubs.
- Joint EB Donations – The Mariners and the Padres will each make an annual donation to EB Research Partnership.
- Vedder Cup Series Theme Game at Petco Park – The Padres will host a Vedder Cup Series Theme Game on May 17 in Game 2 of their 3-game series against the Mariners. Tickets to this exclusive theme game event will be available for purchase at Padres.com/Vedder.
- Mariners Vedder Cup Ticket Special – The Mariners will hold a Vedder Cup ticket special for the August 27 finale of the season series between the two clubs. Fans can learn more at Mariners.com/VedderCup.
- Vedder Cup Merchandise – The Mariners and Padres will both offer fans the opportunity to buy Vedder Cup merchandise at Team Stores in Seattle and San Diego during the series.
Both teams will be taking the Vedder Cup seriously, and have even put in place a series of tiebreakers should the teams split the season series at 3-3:
- Run Differential – The team with a greater run differential in the season series.
- EV (short for Exit Velocity and Eddie Vedder) – If the clubs share an even run differential in the season series, the team with the highest exit velocity recorded on a hit will win the Vedder Cup.
While I’ve never been a big fan of Interleague play, it’s obviously not going anywhere. Kudos to the Padres and Mariners for first informally, and now officially, doing their best to make the series’ between the two teams a true rivalry, even where none truly existed.
Your thoughts?
I’ve always wondered what teams with no natural rivals (Toronto, Minnesota) do to drum up business, and it’s unfair that other teams (say, the Yankees) have two or more rivals (Boston, the Mets).
I am a Twins fan, and the White Sox are definitely the big rival, although I agree with your point overall.
The Twins have several natural rivals with deep history, sure, but they’re mostly in the American League. Since realignment, though, Milwaukee has been conveniently an interleague opponent. The two teams and fandoms are more alike than opposed, but it’s probably the closest we’re gonna get. It’s not like MLB is about to put an NL team in Winnipeg or Des Moines.
Isn’t Eddie a Cubs fan?
Yes.
Even wrote “All the Way” for the Cubs.
I love PJ, strongly dislike this.
*And I had mentioned sarcastically in another post not too long ago “what, no coverage for the Vedder Cup”
This is sorta fun until you remember Vedder is a die-hard Cubs fan. Just feels like a merchandise cash grab to me.
Isn’t it the opposite of that? It started with the fans and people covering the team having fun with it and now the teams have embraced it.
I don’t want to see another article complaining about a team adding a ad patch. When you have ads blocking parts of and sometimes the entire homepage. Only to exit them, open a article and the exact same ads pop up again
If the ads bother you that much, become a member.
Or just use Brave web browser.
This is the thousandth time I’ve seen this ridiculous argument, and it’s just as bad as the first time. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, get out of the kitchen. And your forest is filled with apple and orange trees.
Will the song Eddie Vedder by Local H be played during the trophy presentation?
I’m all for it. Even if Eddie’s a Cubs fan and neither the Mariners nor Padres are my team, I think this is rad.
On a side note, what happens after the A’s move to a place where they’re geographically closer to San Diego than San Francisco? Will they keep the A’s/Giants rivalry once it’s no longer relevant?
The A’s/Giants rivalry is mostly in fun, and it’s mostly about picking on each other over why anyone would be so foolish as to root for whichever team. Yes, we had the battle of the bay, but other than that, the “rivalry” brings people together more than apart. The giants natural rival is most definitely the dodgers. I suspect the A’s will have to strike up a rivalry with the diamondbacks.
Reminds me of the Champions League trophy.
The obvious connection between Seattle and San Diego is they represent the northern and southern terminus of Interstate 5, respectively.
I don’t know about San Diego, but Seattle isn’t the Northern terminus for I5.
I5 goes for another 135 miles North before reaching the border.
he just wanted to say terminus so he made some stuff up
In a 162 game season, creating reasons to care about a game in May and August seems like a good thing to me. There is no negative here, and baseball could use more of this.
Well this just seems dumb beyond belief.
I like it! It’s fun and a way to bring some sort of meaning to a fabricated “rivalry.” Plus, there’s the charity aspect, which is nice.
I’ve noticed at least one comment about a “merch dump,” but it’s not that in a negative sense at all. The connotation of a merch dump is that it affects the on-field look of the teams, which this doesn’t. Just like any other merch that is sold literally anywhere, you don’t have to buy it. The difference with the CC unis is that they’re a merch dump you can’t ignore if you want to watch a game.
this is awesome.
Seems like a fun, harmless idea. I like it…
Been a huge Pearl Jam fan since 1991, and this is beyond lame. Eddie is obviously a Cubs fan, so it doesn’t make any sense.
While silly, I like how this sort of naturally came about from MLB trying to force an interleague rivalry, and various parties involved ran with it to create this. Something relatively corporate turned into something more fun and organic. My only gripe would be the cup itself, realistically if we are doing an Eddie theme the winners should just get some sort of flannel inspired reward. I’m almost thinking instead of a championship belt the winner get some sort of championship flannel to wear around their waists.
This is exactly the sort of thing teams should be doing more of. Some of my local soccer team’s fans ginned up a fake rivalry with a team on the other side of the country just for kicks in 2019, and now the three games the teams play every year are a huge rivalry that all fans of both teams and the players and execs of both teams take deadly seriously. It’s still all in good fun, but it elevates the game to have what would otherwise be mostly meaningless mid-season games turned into a competitive event like this.
I do wonder though whether anyone got permission from Fender to use its trademarked headstock shape in the logo.
I’m in favor of anything that gets MLB teams to donate to charities. So let’s go!
*Strong* $5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy vibes!
I’m here for it.
It’s a little goofy, but I’m okay with it.
On a scale of fun promotions, I might not quite give it a ten, but it should help keep the midseason games alive. The name has a nice even flow to it. True natural rivals these teams are not, but at least they’re both near the oceans, and neither will be wearing black. Perhaps we’ll see Jeremiah Estrada pitch in relief for the Padres, but someone will go deep regardless.
The logo is not great, but at least the headstock of the guitar is pretty much correct since it resembles that of a Fender Telecaster, which is what Ed plays most often onstage.
Hi Phil! I’m glad the rivalry is back. I just wanted to tell you this since I’ve been reading a lot about this lately, but I realize that anybody can have eternal life after death. ALL you have to do is put all your faith in to Jesus and you WILL be saved. No more, no less. You can use UNI WATCH to glorify god alongside updating sports enthusiasts. Jesus is waiting for you with open arms and he is real! I love Jesus and Jesus loves you! I’m praying for you. You’re an awesome person and we share the same interests so I just want to make sure you’re in good condition for eternity. Here’s a few verses for you from Colossians:
8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
I’m compelled to tell you these things out of obedience and worship for god whose Holy Spirit has guided me here. Amen and God bless.
This feels as natural as the Pitt – Cincinnatti River City Rivalry the Big East tried to manufacture. But it seems like a lot of fun! Vedder is a big baseball fan, so I’m sure he’s excited to be a part of it, and that’s enough for me.
I had to get out the map to complete the set. Looks like our Tigers would be paired with Toronto and the Trophy of Independance between Boston and Philly would work for me!
Exit Velocity tiebreaker is hilarious
Omg. The griping in these boards lately. Makes no sense because he’s a cubs fan? It makes plenty of sense, as he hails from both cities. Moreover he endorses it, so who is anyone else to say it makes no sense? Also it’s a charity event, so think about what you’re actually complaining about. And before anyone goes off on how much money MLB makes and how much money actually makes it to the charities, don’t. I already know. This is a way to drum up some fun and give money to charity at the same time. If teams giving away bobble heads and T-shirts with corporate logos on them doesn’t bother you, then this definitely shouldn’t bother you. Besides, until mlb puts a team in Portland, Boise, or Vancouver, the mariners have no natural rival, and San Diego being such a big college and military town (lots of transplants), their rivals are the fans of whatever team they are playing at any given time who show up to hassle the Pads fans. Let them have some fun.
Then why not have it for Chicago? Or what about Philly? PJ sells out there every show.
How about a year long tournament to award to the best round robin team?
Because he’s not from Philly or Chicago. Pearl Jam sells out most of their shows everywhere I imagine. Once again, Eddie vedder signed off on this so who is anyone to tell him what teams or towns to suport?
Well, Padres and Mariners share Peoria for spring training. Why not another “competition” mid season.
The reason this really works for me is BECAUSE it is so absurd, but everyone seems to recognize that. What bothers me is when the marketing speak has such a serious tone in ways that is misaligned with the actual thing.
For charity so I say thumbs up, even if it feels a little contrived. That cup looks way too serious, though. Should have some winks and nods to Vedder (like a plaid pattern or some bobblehead players from both teams attached to it). Pearl Jam used to play concerts with lots of miniature athletes attached to their monitors. And ofcourse the Mookie Blaylock story. Not a fan of their music but this is fun, so again: thumbs up!
Love the camaraderie along with care & love of creating this sporting idea ❤️