Padres, Mariners get serious: The Vedder Cup just got real
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Eddie Vedder threw out the first pitch in Chicago, before a Cubs-Padres game last year. Photo: David Banks/Getty Images
The Vedder Cup is actually a real thing now.
State of play: The San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners announced Friday they've officially dubbed their six-game series each season the Vedder Cup, complete with a trophy to determine which city can claim credit for Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.
Why it matters: Fans willed this branding exercise into existence, ever since a Padres blog in 2011 coined the phrase as part of a half-serious acknowledgement that Seattle and San Diego are not actually rivals.
How it works: MLB has for years paired AL and NL teams together as so-called "natural rivals" who meet every season. Many of those — like the New York Mets and New York Yankees — are, indeed, natural rivals.
- The Seattle-San Diego pairing, though, was more a result of two teams and cities left out of the fun at the end of a round of musical chairs, so fans reverse engineered a justification.
Between the lines: Vedder, a Chicago Cubs fan, was raised in San Diego — he grew up in Encinitas, attended San Dieguito Academy, later lived in La Mesa, and formed the band Bad Radio here.
- But he famously moved to Seattle in 1990 to join the band that would become Pearl Jam. He was soon the frontman for the biggest band in the world, and helped make Seattle synonymous with the 1990s.
What's next: The Vedder Cup will begin with three games in San Diego from May 16-18, then finish with three in Seattle Aug. 25-27. Games will be themed around the event, with special merch available.
- The winner will take home a Vedder-designed trophy featuring a guitar he provided.
- The teams are partnering to support EB Research Partnership, a nonprofit funded by Vedder and his wife Jill.
Before the teams settle the competition on the diamond, we wanted Seattle and San Diego to make their cases for rightful ownership of the Vedder legacy.
The San Diego case
One of rock's greatest stories owes itself to San Diego's waves.
Zoom in: Vedder was living in San Diego when he received a three-song instrumental tape from his soon-to-be bandmates in Seattle, through mutual friend Jack Irons, the former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer. The band in Seattle was looking for a singer.
- "(The tape) brought out some emotions that I hadn't touched on in a while," Vedder told San Diego's Cameron Crowe for his 2011 documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty. Vedder went surfing in Pacific Beach that morning, came home "with the sand still in my feet" and wrote and recorded vocals over the tracks.
- Those songs would come to be known as the Momma-Son Trilogy — Alive, Once and Footsteps — a "mini-opera" about a boy learning who his father was.
- He sent the tape back to Seattle, and Pearl Jam was born.
The Seattle case
There's no question we get to claim Vedder as ours, given that he's lived here for more than three decades.
Case in point: In addition to helping make Seattle grunge a thing everywhere, he can still be seen from time to time hanging at a record shop near his home in West Seattle.
- Whatever inspiration Vedder found on the waves, Pearl Jam was formed in Seattle and its debut album "Ten" was recorded at a local studio here — not against the backdrop of the San Diego shores.
- Maybe Chicago has a case, given that Vedder was born in nearby Evanston and lived in Illinois for many years. But San Diego? Please.