Baseball, Food, And Music, With A Country Slant — Extra Innings Festival 2025

Extra Innings Festival 2025 took place February 28 and March 1 at Tempe Beach Park in Arizona. In its second year, the festival is an expansion from Innings Festival, which has been running for seven years now. The two-day event is timed with the start of Major League Baseball’s Cactus League in Scottsdale Arizona. I usually try to schedule my annual Spring Training trip to coincide with Innings Fest classic, but due to a scheduling conflict with Las Vegas Diecast SuperCon this year, I decided to give the expansion team a go this year. 

This year’s line-up included popular acts The Lumineers, Kings of Leon, Megan Moroney, Red Clay Strays, and Kacey Musgraves, among many others. While some of the musical acts don’t necessarily fall squarely into the country genre, this second weekend was heavily slanted toward that crowd. 

The first set I caught on Friday was Evan Honer on the Home Plate Stage. I hadn’t heard of this guy until I saw his name on the announcements that came out a couple months ago, but I played several tracks on the eight hour drive out to Scottsdale. His mix of acoustic folk, indie-Americana, and alternative pop is a fun listen.

After backflipping out to center stage, Honer sang Everything I Wanted, Place I Hate, I Figured We’d Go Dancin’, Nowhere Fast, Wake Up, Come Down, Me, Without You, Take Me As I Come (with Wyatt Flores), Jersey Giant, Foolin’ Ourselves, and Too Far Gone, before finishing up with the catchy (and hilarious) IDK Shit About Cars. 

I really enjoyed this act. In addition to crossing the lines of music genres in really fun and interesting ways, the dude is just having fun, and that’s always entertaining to watch. He also got a huge pop for reminding the crowd that he’s originally from nearby Surprise, Arizona.

Over to the Right Field Stage, Trampled By Turtles played Kelly’s Bar, Victory, It’s So Hard to Hold On, Walt Whitman, Widower’s Heart, The Middle, Truck, On the Highway, Cold Rain & Snow, Codeine, Whiskey, Alone, and Wait So Long. 

Back to Home Plate, Wyatt Flores sang Welcome to the Plains, Break My Bones, Stillwater, Losing Sleep, I Believe in God (with Evan Honer), Holes, Orange Bottles, Milwaukee, How to Save a Life (The Fray cover, with Sam Barber), Please Don’t Go, Oh Susannah, Don’t Wanna Say Goodnight, Running Out of Time, and West of Tulsa.

I had to catch an episode of Off The Mound with Ryan Dempster at this point. I realized that, in the six or so years I’ve been covering Innings Festival, I had never made it over to the Left Field Stage to see the former MLB pitcher’s talk show. I am so glad I finally did. Dempster began his show with a short monologue before playing his “highlight reel,” featuring a bunch of short clips showing Dempster getting absolutely owned on the mound in key at-bats. That set the stage for 45 minutes worth of self-effacing humor, music guests, and MLB insider stories. 

By the time Megan Moroney took the Home Plate stage, Tempe Beach Park was packed. Moroney delighted fans with Lucky, I’m Not Pretty, Sleep on My Side, No Caller ID, Nothin’ Crazy, Wonder, Hair Salon, Man on the Moon, Bless Your Heart, Break It Right Back, Miss Universe, Indifferent, Girl in the Mirror, Tennessee Orange, and Am I Okay?.

At this point, I left the park to go grab a Triple D Burger and a few beers (and maybe a whisky or two) at The Lodge Sasquatch Kitchen over on South Farmer. I love this place so much. The “Woodsy Winterland” has a themed decor that would be right at home in Tahoe or Yosemite. There’s an impressive list of beers on tap, and a couple dozen choices for whisky. Oh, and the Bigfoots. So many Bigfoots. 

Back to the park for The Lumineers on the Home Plate Stage. They played Cleopatra, Same Old Song, Sleep on the Floor, Flowers in Your Hair, Angela, Asshole, Leader of the Landslide, Dead Sea, Submarines, Slow It Down, Ho Hey, Where We Are, You’re All I Got, Gloria, A.M. Radio, Brightside, Ophelia, Big Parade, So Long, Remington, Reprise, and Stubborn Love. 

That was just day one. Both festival days were absolutely jammed with entertainment value. Whether your particular fancy is the pitching booth and batting cage, the talk shows, musical entertainment, the excellent food and drink (leaded and unleaded) offerings, or the MLB player autograph sessions, there are so many different experiences available, it is impossible to run out of options. 

I am an absolute sucker for events just like this. All of us geek out to something, and most of us geek out to several somethings. It is so much fun to find the areas of overlap between favorite geeky fandoms. Before you start, baseball and music are both extremely geeky niche fandoms. Favorite band shirt? Favorite player jersey? That’s cosplay. Bobbleheads? Posters? Beer coozies? Collectibles. Dempster’s show? That’s a panel. Cosplay, collectibles, panels, music, food, and drink, with thousands of attendees? That’s a convention. Fight me. 

Innings Festival and Extra Innings Festival both scratch two of my absolute most favorite fandoms, music and baseball. I love them both so much, and I will continue attending these shows as long as they keep putting them on. My biggest issue now is whether to attend Innings Festival or Extra Innings Festival in Spring 2026.