Grateful Dead Nights Are Taking Over MLB. Here’s How That Happened

I
magine a stadium packed with fans in tie-dyed T-shirts, many of them flashing the peace sign, smiles plastered on their faces, swaying to the music of the Grateful Dead. The serene vibes are momentarily interrupted by the thwack of a Louisville Slugger. No, you’re not at a Dead and Company concert. You’re at Jerry Garcia Night at a Major League Baseball game. 

In recent years, while the Grateful Dead’s fan base continues to grow, 29 years after Garcia’s death, a surprising trend is playing out across the United States: More than half of Major League Baseball’s teams have hosted a Jerry Garcia or Grateful Dead Night. The Giants, A’s, Red Sox, Orioles, Tigers, Yankees, Cubs, Nationals, Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Pirates, Blue Jays, Mariners, Padres, White Sox, Brewers, Reds, and Phillies have all embraced Deadheads for one night of the season. 

“Obviously, hippies and pro sports have not had a lot of things they’ve agreed on in the past,” says Trixie Garcia, Jerry’s daughter. “But this seems to be one of them.”

With sold-out Dead Forever shows at Sphere in Las Vegas and chic “dancing bears” streetwear collections, the Dead have fully veered into the mainstream. They’re a cosmos away from their mid-’60s psychedelic roots in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Collaborating with a pro-sports league might seem like another act of corporate synergy. So why do clusters of Deadheads gate-crashing the buttoned-up big leagues feel so in touch with the band’s hippie origins? 

ON A CHILLY MONDAY EVENING in August, I attended Jerry Garcia Night at San Francisco’s Oracle Park, at a game pitting the Giants against the Atlanta Braves. In 2010, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Garcia’s passing, the Giants were the first MLB team to host a Grateful Dead-themed game, and since then have held the most Dead-related promotional nights. It makes sense. For decades, at Bay Area venues from the Fillmore to the Oakland Coliseum, the Grateful Dead held court like the hometown house band.

“I think baseball games are kind of like the Grateful Dead experience.”

Rocco Baldelli, Minnesota Twins manager

Walking up to the stadium pregame, the crowd buzzed with an energy unlike a normal night at the ballpark. Fans hawked bootleg Grateful Dead shirts that featured mashups of the Giants’ logo and the Dead’s “Steal Your Face” emblem, while Europe ‘72 blasted from a parked car’s stereo. Almost everyone wore black-and-orange tie-dyed shirts. Before the first pitch, Bay Area psych-soul stalwarts Moonalice jammed on a set of Dead covers, while Deadheads who paid for a VIP package milled around on the right-field warning track.

After the first official Jerry Garcia Night in 2010, Faham Zakariaei, the Giants’ senior director of promotions and special events, notes that the team rotated themes each year. “2011 would be a Grateful Dead Night. 2012 would be a Jerry Night, so we’d go back and forth,” he says. “Year one was great. We sold close to 12,000 special-event tickets. And we haven’t really stopped since then.”

Starting with the Giants, the Jerry Garcia Night phenomenon has spread across the league. “A lot of people felt that it only made sense to do this in San Francisco, because of the city’s connection with Jerry and the Grateful Dead,” Zakariaei says. “But I think the first team that did it after us, outside of our market, might’ve been the Red Sox, and they saw huge numbers. Slowly, word got out: It’s not just a San Francisco thing.”

This season, five MLB teams hosted a Jerry Garcia Night: San Francisco, Oakland, Cincinnati, Boston, and the New York Yankees. Other teams have hosted Grateful Dead Nights, in collaboration with Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino Entertainment LLC. In total, there have been 45 MLB celebrations of the Grateful Dead, and 20 Jerry Garcia Nights. The Royals held their most recent Grateful Dead Night on April 20 (naturally). 

Across the league, whether celebrating Jerry or the Dead, the festivities often include a performance by a cover band, a promotional giveaway like a tie-dyed shirt or a Jerry bobblehead, and music by the Grateful Dead played throughout the game. Last season, I attended Jerry Garcia Night in Oakland. The A’s set up a PA system on a pavilion above left field and blasted Grateful Dead deep cuts for the entire game. About 150 Deadheads danced for all nine innings without stopping. 

AFTER THE PREGAME MOONALICE CONCERT in San Francisco, the hordes of Deadheads at Jerry Garcia Night make their way from the warning track to their seats in the stands. I take an elevator up to a luxury suite with a sweeping view of the bay to catch a couple of innings with Jerry Garcia’s family and friends. Over the years, members of the Dead and their loved ones have regularly attended the Giants’ Dead-related festivities. Basketball legend and dedicated Deadhead Bill Walton, who died in May, never missed a Grateful Dead celebration in San Francisco. 

In the luxury suite, older friends and relatives of Garcia sit and watch the game, while the younger generation lounge on couches, scrolling on their phones. In the bottom of the second, someone walks over to the buffet line and gleefully shouts, “These are vegan hot dogs!”

In between innings, I speak with Trixie Garcia. Trixie, 49, inherited her father’s flowing hair, impish smile, and distrust of the establishment. “Every small town has their Grateful Dead cover band,” she says. “Traveling as a youth, I remember going to the Nile and seeing a Bob Marley flag on a boat there, and I was like, ‘Wow, his message must really resonate with all these people globally.’ And now, 30 years later it’s amazing to see that the Grateful Dead have also infiltrated all these little corners in the world.”

Trixie notes that proceeds from ticket sales at MLB’s Jerry Garcia Nights go to the Rex Foundation, a nonprofit started by the Dead in 1983. In fact, it was the first nonprofit started by a rock band for philanthropic purposes.

“They were getting proposals for charitable contributions so often that they decided to start their own charity,” says Trixie, who is a Rex Foundation board member. “We research the grants ourselves. We do everything from salmon hatcheries to drumming sessions with incarcerated youth.”

The Rex Foundation has raised nearly $300,000 from Jerry Garcia Nights at Major League Baseball games, according to Cameron Sears, the organization’s executive director (and former Grateful Dead manager). Sears adds, “We always try to write grants that support causes in the communities where the games take place.” 

THE DEAD’S LONG, STRANGE TRIP TO the heart of baseball started on MLB’s Opening Day in 1993. On that occasion, Garcia, Bob Weir, and Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick belted out the national anthem at Candlestick Park, the Giants’ former stadium. As a young baseball fan in the Bay Area, I remember that Garcia, Weir, and Welnick singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” was divisive. In the early 1990s, a large chunk of baseball’s fan base were from the Greatest Generation, a demographic that didn’t exactly vibe with hippies.

“It was divisive amongst the Deadheads, too,” Trixie says of the ’93 anthem performance. “It was like, ‘Oh, are they doing stuff for the man now?’” But Garcia, Weir, and Welnick electrified the crowd — Deadheads and squares alike — with their a cappella performance.

“It’s two very American things coming together,” Trixie says of baseball and the Grateful Dead. “And look at the stadium now.” Trixie gestures at the sea of baseball fans in Oracle Park wearing tie-dyed shirts. “Tie-dye is a legit pattern now. It’s not just for outcasts and weirdos. It’s fucking amazing.”

From his perch in the Garcia friends-and-family suite, “Big” Steve Parish surveys the view of the bay. “Jerry was a San Francisco kid. He grew up not far from here. That area out there, we called it the Dogpatch,” he says, pointing to the neighborhood beyond right field. “Jerry loved all things San Francisco. So did we all.” 

For decades, Parish, 74, served as Garcia’s right-hand man: his roadie, his stage manager, the best man at his wedding, the last friend to see him alive, and the deliverer of his eulogy. Earlier in the night at the Giants game, Parish threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Even though the Dead were more known for acid tests than their athletic prowess, Parish recalls that the Dead and their crew occasionally played baseball in the band’s early days.

“The first baseball game we played was against the Jefferson Airplane,” Parish tells me. “This is 1969, turning into ’70. We lived in Central Marin, in a town called Nicasio. That was where Rucka Rucka Ranch was, Bob [Weir]’s place. So we used to play baseball — very loosely — on Rucka Rucka. That whole part of Marin was old ranchers. They didn’t really like us hippies in the area. So they tried to kick us off the field. We said, ‘No, we’re playing the game.’ So we played the Airplane. And Pigpen, our beloved Pigpen, he decides he’s not going to play on either team. He’s going to be the umpire.”

Just the thought of Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the Dead’s rollicking organist and harmonica player, who died in 1973 at age 27, brings a smile to Parish’s face. 

“And so I go, ‘Oh, good. We got our guy as the umpire.’ Well, he did not give us a break. Pigpen was totally impartial. It pissed all of us off. We said, ‘Can’t you help us a little bit?’ But no. So we’re deciding where everybody should play. Weir wanted to play first base. He was adamant. Jerry goes, ‘I’ll play third base.’ The first hit goes right down the line to Jerry. And Jerry doesn’t even bend over. It goes right between his legs. I was out in the outfield and I backed him up. I got it, pegged it in. They got a three-bagger out of it. And I said to Jerry, ‘Hey, you’re supposed to bend down.’ He goes, ‘I’m not bending down for a ball, man.’ So this is what we were up against.”

At this moment in Parish’s story, the Giants fans erupt in a cheer. A grounder has just taken a bad hop through the legs of the Atlanta Braves third baseman and into left field. It feels like the kind of cosmic wink from Jerry that Deadheads seem to notice. 

Parish says the Grateful Dead and their crew members continued to play pickup baseball games in the early ’70s. One time, they faced off against a team called the Marin County Dope Dealers, who were, in fact, drug dealers from Marin County. “Those guys were organized,” Parish says of the Dope Dealers. “They were probably the toughest team we faced.”

IN 2024, THE AVERAGE AGE OF A Major League Baseball player is 28.72 years old, which means the average pro ballplayer was born after Garcia died. I wanted to speak to someone connected to today’s game who harbors a passion for the music of the Grateful Dead. All signs point to Rocco Baldelli, the 42-year-old manager of the Minnesota Twins. 

Baldelli, who was the youngest skipper in the bigs when the Twins hired him in 2018, won the American League Manager of the Year award in his first season. He’s led the Twins to three first-place finishes in his five years at the helm in Minnesota, and, yes, he loves the Grateful Dead. Growing up in Rhode Island, Baldelli listened to 94HJY, the local classic-rock station, on his morning commute to school with his dad. This was his gateway to all things Dead. 

Baldelli and the Twins are in the homestretch of a tight AL Central pennant race, but he takes the time to share his thoughts on why Deadheads have taken to congregating at MLB ballparks. 

“I think baseball games are kind of like the Grateful Dead experience,” Baldelli says. “There are a lot of different elements to the sights, the sounds, and the smells. And so many different parts, like coming to the game early, are almost ritualistic for a lot of the fans in this game. I think a lot of the Dead’s fans enjoy that experience, too.”

Baldelli, one of baseball’s great minds, smartly connected our national pastime with the Dead on a temporal level. “Baseball, I would say it’s a very nuanced game,” Baldelli says, “It’s a game with exciting moments and periods of time and innings where the game changes pace, too. And a lot of that, I think music fans can relate to, especially fans who love the Dead.”

I think back to a woman I met at Jerry Garcia Night in San Francisco who brought her infant son, her husband, and her father. Three generations of Jerry and Giants fans together at the ballpark. Baldelli also recognized that people connect with baseball and the Dead on a deep, personal level.

“I feel like the same type of souls that enjoy their music also enjoy this game,” Baldelli says, “passing it along to family members and other people who they care about. I think baseball works that way, just like the Dead’s music works that way.”

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, DEAD AND Company played 30 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas. The run grossed more than $130 million and became one of the most talked-about concert events of the year. For these shows, Deadheads descended on Sin City and plunked down top dollar to see the technological marvel. By all accounts, Dead Forever was a success.

But MLB’s Jerry Garcia Nights offer a different experience, one that’s more in touch with the original ethos of the Grateful Dead. In the wake of Garcia’s death, Ken Kesey, the Merry Prankster and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, envisioned a “Deadhead Diaspora.” That phrase is attributed to Kesey in Dark Star, longtime Rolling Stone contributor Robert Greenfield’s 1996 oral biography of Garcia. Kesey imagined that the music, celebration, and ritual of Grateful Dead concerts would fraction off into smaller gatherings across the country. In a sense, he had a vision of the Jerry celebrations happening at baseball games.

Zakariaei, the Giants’ senior director of promotions, remembered the first Jerry Garcia Night the team hosted in 2010. People told him, Hey, the Grateful Dead doesn’t make sense with baseball. “But what we learned is,” Zakariaei says, “it’s not really about baseball; it’s about our community. It brings so many different walks of life together. What’s the saying in the Dead community? We are everywhere. It really does stand true.”

Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Nights, to be sure, are promotional tools to get fans to the ballpark. But they’ve evolved into something more. They’re the opposite of Sphere’s Dead Forever. Instead of descending on one city, they’ve become an annual occasion for pockets of Deadheads across North America to don the tie-dye, congregate in a baseball cathedral, dance to the music, greet old friends, and let the sunshine daydream linger on a little longer.