SEATTLE -- Eddie Vedder himself put the finishing touches on the 1963 Fender Telecaster guitar by jamming out with it for about an hour last week before it was shipped off to T-Mobile Park for this week’s series between the Mariners and Padres.
And when it arrived on Monday, the instrument -- which will serve as the Vedder Cup trophy for the rivalry between these clubs -- was as advertised in all its creative splendor.
“He gave it a good run through,” said George Webb, equipment manager for Pearl Jam, the iconic rock band that Vedder is the frontman for, and who worked on the project. “He always likes to feel like he puts a little energy, spiritual energy, into an instrument and not just hand off something that's brand new, never touched, kind of thing.”
The “Vedder Cup” concludes this week between the Mariners and Padres. With Monday's win, Seattle clinched this year's series and was awarded the guitar trophy that was constructed by Fender with significant influence from Vedder, a one-time resident of both San Diego and Seattle and a lifelong baseball fan.
Like the Stanley Cup, there will only be one trophy that will reside with the winning team each year. And Vedder hopes it carries far more practical impact.
“He doesn't want it to be just a hang-on-the-wall trophy piece,” said Webb, who’s been with Pearl Jam for 34 years. “He wants it to be played.”
The intricacy is in the details:
• The 1963 Fender Telecaster resembles the same model that Vedder plays, with the same body shape and neck dimensions.
• A silver/black cresting wave, hand-drawn by Vedder, envelopes the top of the instrument and to the strap button, which was actually the most difficult component to install because it had to be airbrushed.
• Vedder’s signature is on the front of the headstock.
• An arrow is in the area of the pick guard, while a mod symbol is between the two teams’ logos as an homage to “The Who,” Vedder’s favorite band growing up. A similar logo is on Vedder’s own Telecaster.
• Each team’s logo is imprinted on the volume and tone controls.
• The entire back side is covered in large, black overlapping secondary logos for each team.
• There are small chrome plates for the winning team of each season series to engrave their logo and the results of the season matchup. There is room for four currently, but they can be rotated to the back once the front reaches capacity.
• The neck plate has a silhouette of “Into the Wild,” the debut solo studio album Vedder released in 2007.
• There’s also calligraphy in Vedder’s handwriting that reads “Vedder Cup, est. 2025 by Major League Baseball” with the MLB logo.
• The rear of the headstock features the logo of EB Research Partnership (EBRP), the nonprofit that Vedder and his wife, Jill, established in 2010 to help find a cure for Epidermolysis Bullosa, the devastating and life-threatening genetic skin disorder. The Padres and Mariners have also partnered to support the cause.
The turnaround time was eight weeks, said Chase Paul, director of product development at Fender’s custom shop, far faster than the typical range of about six months to assemble for a piece with such specificity.
“The Custom Shop has really kind of established itself as a place to do one-off projects,” Paul said. “But something that is this intricate and this high profile with Major League Baseball, and Ed and Pearl Jam, it's something that's pretty unique.”
That’s not all, though.
The MVP of the series-winning team will be awarded a special “Better Man” trophy -- another homage, but this one to Pearl Jam’s 1994 hit that reached the top of the Billboard rock tracks chart. It’s more of a handheld trophy that features a statue akin to an Academy Award figure but with a surfboard behind it. Vedder is a big surfer. Additionally, Vedder will gift the MVP a signed ukulele.
The concept of a guitar becoming the trophy was concocted in the process of formalizing the rivalry between both teams, which for years had been called the “Vedder Cup” but only became official this season, in an effort by Major League Baseball to form more rivalries. After all, these clubs share their Spring Training facility at the Peoria Sports Complex, and they’ve played almost annually since 1997 (with only the 2017 season not featuring Interleague games between the two).