Eddie Vedder

Edward Jerome Vedder
born Edward Louis Severson III

• Born December 23, 1964 in Evanston, IL USA

Biographical Information

Eddie Vedder rose to fame as the lead singer and frontman of the grunge rock group Pearl Jam in the early 1990s, a band that was eventually inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He was born Eddie Severson in Evanston, IL, his parents divorced when he was only one year old and he became Eddie Mueller for a while, after his stepfather. The family moved to San Diego, CA in the 1970s, but following another divorce, he stayed in San Diego to live with his stepfather as he was completing high school. When he learned that his stepfather was not his biological father, he dropped out of school and began using his mother's maiden name as his last name. After becoming active on the San Diego music scene and in 1990 auditioned as the lead singer for a band based in Seattle, WA, landing him a gig to record with the band Temple of the Dog. Pearl Jam grew out of that band, releasing its debut album, "10", in 1991.

He is a lifetime baseball (and basketball) fan and when the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners began playing interleague games in 1997, fans of the two teams began dubbing the series the "Vedder Cup" in his honor, given his ties to the two cities. The name stuck and became formal in 2025 when he designed a trophy, featuring one of his old guitars, to be given to the winner of the annual series. By then, there had been games between the two teams every season except for 2017. Given that the series normally consisted of two or four games, with therefore a high possibility of a tie, he proposed two tiebreakers to determine the winner: the first was a traditional one - run differential; the second was less so - exit velocity, or E.V. for short, with the player achieving the highest such figure during the games earning his team the trophy.

In return for his endorsement, the series serves to support Vedder's charity of choice, EB Research Partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding research to discover treatments and cures for Epidermolysis Bullosa. The charity was co-founded by Eddie and his wife Jill.

While he has lent his name to an event involving the Padres and Mariners, it's well known, however, that Eddie favors the Chicago Cubs, due to his mother's roots in the Chicago area. As a high-profile supporter of the team, he has sung Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley Field on a number of occasions, including Game 5 of the 2016 World Series, and has also thrown the ceremonial first pitch at Wrigley Field. In 1993, he got into a bar fight with Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell due to the difference in their allegiance, and he was charged with public drunkenness and disturbing the peace. He wrote the song "All the Way", which was released as a single in 2008 at the urging of all-time Cubs great Ernie Banks as a tribute to his favorite team. The song became a theme song for the team when they finally won the World Series eight years later, ending a drought that had lasted over a century.

Further Reading

• AJ Cassavell: "Who's the 'Better Man'? Mariners, Padres make Vedder Cup official", mlb.com, March 15, 2025. [1]