Harrison Bader brings rhythm to the Phillies. His cousin, Chris Baio, does the same as the bassist for Vampire Weekend.
Baio is hoping to catch Bader play in person for the first time as a Phillie on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

If Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader has any musical talent, he’s been hiding it from his cousin, Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio.
That doesn’t mean he has no experience being part of a band, though.
“In many ways, we’re a part of a band in baseball too, [we] maybe just have different instruments,” Bader said ahead of the National League Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. “Obviously, ones that don’t necessarily make the type of music people listen to, but when we hit batting practice or whatever — that sound off the bat or the sounds of the games really are music to us. I do think that they’re all performative in a way, and I think the art in all of them are really connected.”
Baio’s not one to talk, since he never had a knack for baseball either — although he said he’d be happy to help Bader learn an instrument any time. But both have managed to reach massive heights in their respective fields the same way: “passion.”
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“I see his passion and drive,” Baio told The Inquirer. “I see that in every ball that he runs down, every at-bat, his focus. What he does is so, so, so impressive. I think it’s the most impressive thing basically anyone I know has ever done. Those are things that I greatly admire in him, and I hope that I can bring a version of that to what I do.
“Hitting major league pitching is much harder than playing bass guitar, in my estimate. Way, way, way, way harder.”
The cousins grew up together in Bronxville, N.Y., and celebrated family holidays together. Baio is about 10 years older than Bader. When a 3-year-old Bader got his appendix removed, Baio remembers him begging for a 13-year-old Baio to come to the hospital to be with him.
So after Vampire Weekend started to blow up in 2008, when the music video director for the band’s single, “Oxford Comma,” wanted to use kids in the video, Baio called on his family to be part of it, including a then-12-year-old Bader.
“Being in a band and traveling around, it can feel like a version of family, but then actually doing a music video with your own real family on top of your band family, I just remember it being a wonderful day,” Baio said. “It’s nice that it lives on, and there’s this artifact of this music video.”
Baio didn’t follow baseball much before Bader made it to the big leagues and played just one year of youth baseball. He was “absolutely terrible.” He was a “very casual” Yankee fan, but most of his interest in sports lie with the New York Rangers — until Bader made his major league debut with the Cardinals in 2017.
“My palms were completely sweating, and I suddenly became much, much more passionate about baseball than I had ever been up to that point in my life,” Baio said.
Bader, who is 1-for-1 with an RBI through the first two games of the NLDS, has invited Baio and the band to batting practice and games whenever they’re in the same city, but with the MLB schedule and the band’s touring schedule, they don’t often get the chance to get together. Baio rarely has time to watch games, but his father, Bader’s uncle, constantly sends him updates on how his cousin is doing and even sent him one of the “What a gift!” shirts that have taken over the Phillies’ clubhouse.
On Wednesday, Baio is hoping to see Bader play for the Phillies for the first time in person in Los Angeles. Bader hurt his groin in Game 1 of the NLDS but came on to deliver a pinch-hit single late in Game 2. After joining the Phillies at the trade deadline, the 31-year-old outfielder hit .305 in 50 regular-season games, including an extended stint atop the batting order during Trea Turner’s absence.
Baio said he expects Game 3 to be extremely stressful — and that was before the Phillies were on the brink of elimination.
And the admiration doesn’t just go one way.
Bader’s a big fan of the band, citing “M79″ as a staple on his current morning playlist. By now, Vampire Weekend has been active for nearly 20 years, following Bader from his childhood to the majors, but those early albums remain “timeless,” Bader said. He tries to attend shows during the offseason when he can.
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While Bader wouldn’t characterize their relationship as a mentorship — just two cousins supporting one another from afar — he did take a big lesson from his older cousin: that same “passion and drive” that Baio admires in Bader.
“We have people in our lives that set us straight and keep us disciplined and focused,” Bader said. “Growing up, obviously, being aware of how well he was doing, I certainly admired it and respected it and wished him the best. But in terms of applying, I guess, his route to his success, I don’t think I really took that directly into consideration, because they’re just different fields.
“If there’s anything I did learn from him, it was that you can have a passion take you as far as you want it to.”