Baseball, music merge at Innings Festival

Dave Matthews Band, Weezer headline weekend shows in Tempe, Ariz.

February 27th, 2020

Music and baseball will come together in perfect harmony at the third annual Innings Festival this weekend at the Tempe (Ariz.) Beach Park & Arts Park.

It’s an opportunity for fans of music, baseball and food to come together in the backdrop of Spring Training baseball. Dave Matthews Band, Weezer, Portugal. The Man, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and Death Cab for Cutie are among the headliners set to rock this year’s event. The full lineup can be found here.

Innings Festival will be stocked with baseball celebrities, too. Former All-Star pitcher and current MLB Network analyst Ryan Dempster will take his “Off the Mound” talk show back to the desert, one year after it featured Hall of Fame slugger Jim Thome hitting softballs into the crowd and former Cy Young Award winner Jake Peavy covering The Grateful Dead.

“It’s a chance to merge baseball and music together,” Dempster told JamBase.com earlier this week. “So pretty much anywhere in Arizona where the Spring Training facilities are, you can go take in the 1 o’clock game and then go home, shower up if you feel like it. Or, don’t even bother and just keep going and go to a music festival and there’s great bands playing all day.”

Thome and Peavy will be back at Innings Festival this year, alongside a number of current and former MLB stars, including Archie Bradley, Eric Davis, Shawon Dunston, Luis Gonzalez, Ian Happ, Wally Joyner, Kenny Lofton, Miguel Montero, Aaron Rowand, Bret Saberhagen and Rick Sutcliffe.

Festivalgoers can take in music at any one of Innings Festival’s three main stages, try authentic Southwestern fare at the food court, step in the batting cage or try lighting up the radar gun at the Speed Pitch booth. The MLB stars mentioned above will appear at spots throughout the festival grounds for autographs and meet-and-greets.

Great music, great food and baseball stars galore. You can find it all at this year’s Innings Festival. Head here to purchase tickets.