2022 Florida Innings Festival, A Home Run of an Inaugural Event

The world of music and baseball has always been linked. From the traditional 7th inning stretch to a Drake walk up song for a batter, music has always had a tie in with baseball. So, in 2019, Innings Festival launched its first event in Tempe, Arizona which drew large crowds and got fans like you and me excited for the upcoming baseball season.

With acts such as Jimmy Eat World, Sheryl Crow, and this year in 2022, Foo Fighters, the event has not only established itself as a fun and intriguing event each year in Arizona, but it also has allowed fans the opportunity to meet some of the game’s biggest stars such as Roger Clemens and Dave Stewart, allowing for one-on-one experiences. This year though the landscape changed as a new destination arise for the popular festival, Florida.

2022 marked the first year that Innings Festival made its way to the 2nd of the two Spring Training hotbeds and with the announcement of the season returning a week before the event, it got the crowd buzzing again for baseball.

Overall, for any music fan or baseball fan, the event is must. With incredible performances put on by Green Day, 311 and Incubus on Saturday to The Lumineers and Goo Goo Dolls on Sunday, music fans would have gone nuts. With the usage of pyrotechnics and lighting, each show was given its own take and each band brought out the best in them.

When it comes to the baseball side of things for the event, the opportunity to meet legends were endless, as autograph meetings and photo ops were available with players such as Gary Sheffield, Andruw Jones, Lou Pinella, and even the Hall of Famer himself, “The Wizard,” Ozzie Smith. Another great highlight of the weekend was the live podcast held by former MLB pitcher with the Cubs, Ryan Dempster as he hosted live sit-down interviews for his show, Off the Mound by Ryan Dempster. His interviews were very entertaining, and Dempster was great with the fans as he would wander the grounds of the festival and shoot t-shirts off with his T-Shirt Cannon and speaking of t-shirts that goes into the purchasing that happens at the event.

When it comes to food and beverage, the festival offered good food and good drinks at reasonable prices as the food and beverages being sold is comparable to what you see at the ballpark, but they did have great variety and had a little bit of everything, accommodating to everyone in your party. As for merchandise, the event offered neat apparel and other souvenirs that allowed you to take home piece of the event while also tying into the state of Florida with the theme as well. And for fans of the bands playing, their shirts and merchandise was also available for purchase as well, as fans could have brought home the best of both worlds.

To anyone interested in this event, I would recommend to any fans of baseball and/or music to come to Innings Festival FL 2023 because I promise it’s worth it to come here and soak up the sun while having the time of your life.