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Last week, Bryce Harper looked briefly like a villain. I’m sure you know the story by now, so I’ll keep this recap brief. On Thursday, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about a gambler who is suing FanDuel and DraftKings for allegedly using “their products and VIP services to intentionally maximize addiction.” The specific VIP service that turned this into such a big story was a video, branded with the FanDuel logo, in which Harper thanked the fan for his support. The idea that the biggest stars in baseball are secretly recording videos as perquisites to keep deeply indebted gambling addicts hooked on FanDuel understandably outraged many people, but it was an odd story, because Harper was not known to have any affiliation with FanDuel.

The truth was, well, stupid. Harper really doesn’t have any affiliation with FanDuel. A FanDuel employee ordered the video on Cameo, and told Harper what to say. Harper read the script he was given, which included the phrase, “Your host Bryttanni from FanDuel wanted to make sure your Thanksgiving was extra special,” and then the employee slapped a logo on the video. Harper has since released a statement which read, in part, “I did not know FanDuel would do this, I did not consent to it, and FanDuel had no right to do it. Had I known FanDuel’s true intent, I would not have made the video.” That’s about as unequivocal as it gets. Harper said the request was for a personal video, and that “Cameo had a separate category for business video requests, and at the time I did not know this video would be used for commercial purposes.” The statement also included screenshots of the instructions he received through Cameo, script and all. Harper isn’t really the villain here.

It’s not at all surprising that someone who spends their workdays figuring out how to squeeze more money out of people with gambling problems would try to get a video like this made. What’s surprising is that they were actually able to do it. In this article, I’m going to ask and answer several smaller questions about the relationship between Cameo and baseball. I’m doing so to compensate for the fact that I have no way of answering the really big question that’s staring us right in the face: Why the heck is Bryce Harper on Cameo?

Let’s start with a foundational question: What is Cameo? Cameo is a website that lets you purchase personalized videos from famous (or fame-adjacent) people. The concept would make Andy Warhol blush uncomfortably. You pay their fee, tell them more or less what you’d like them to say, and then they look at your instructions for six-to-eight seconds and record a slapdash, squinty-eyed video. That may sound glib, but the squinty eyes are a load-bearing part of the Cameo experience. I’ve now watched dozens of these videos, and I can confirm that the subject almost always looks like their eyes are fully closed. They’re staring at a bright screen, specifically at the bottom, where the instructions are printed so that they can read them as they vamp their way through the video, and they’re usually holding the phone a bit below their face, which causes them to look down, which gives their eyelids permission to droop a little lower than usual. If you enjoy squinty eyes, Cameo is the service for you. It exploded in popularity in 2020, when everyone was stuck in their houses. Maybe you couldn’t go to the store and buy your spouse flowers for your anniversary, but you didn’t have to go to the store in order to get Kenny G to wish them a happy anniversary on your behalf.

Apparently Kenny G is huge on Cameo. Although he charges $375 (more for a “full song/sax serenade”), he has 876 reviews and a 4.99-star rating. You can actually watch the lone video out of 876 for which Kenny G earned a one-star review. I have no idea what he did wrong. He didn’t even have squinty eyes! Kenny G is the only person who never seems to have squinty eyes. No wonder he can charge so much.

I have used Cameo once. In 2022, I paid $63 (or 0.17 Kenny Gs) for a birthday message for my future wife from Kim-Joy, a contestant on the 2018 season of The Great British Bake Off. It was just meant to be silly and surprising, and she loved it. The site has an extremely tight character limit for the instructions. It never occurred to me that you could give a script, like that FanDuel employee did. It must have been extremely short. You really can’t give more than some very general parameters. I’d mentioned in my instructions that we were experimenting with gluten free baking at the time, and right in the middle of the video, Kim-Joy remembered that, got inspired, and wandered into the kitchen to talk about her favorite gluten free flours. It was a delight.

That’s usually what Cameo is for. It’s for remembering some guys. It’s for weird surprises. It allows people who have some small-to-medium amount of fame, either because they once were very famous or they are now internet famous, to make some money off that fame at the cost of the minor, mostly private indignity of serving as a human greeting card. And, of course, it’s for the kind of person who thinks getting Kenny G to play “Happy Birthday to You” for a loved one is funny enough to spend $375 on it. The default text in the search bar at the top reads, “Search for Real Housewives.” It’s not for the Bryce Harpers of the world.

I had more or less forgotten about Cameo over the past four years, so it came as something of a shock to learn that not only does it still exist, but if you fork over what is essentially pocket change for Bryce Harper, he will record a video of himself saying absolutely anything you want him to say. And by the way, that hasn’t changed since last week. Somehow, after all this drama, Harper hasn’t shut down his Cameo account. It’s still active! You can order a video from him right now! Again, we ask: Why?

Harper charges $899, or 2.4 Kenny G Units, for a video, which is nuts. And yes, for the rest of this article, I will be breaking down each Cameo fee based on how it relates to Kenny G’s fee. In the same way that the average distance from the Earth to the Sun is one Astronomical Unit, $375 is one Kenny G Unit. It’s the crossover America has been waiting for. Please get on board with it now, or the rest of the article will be frustrating for you. Let’s ask some more questions.

Why does Bryce Harper charge so little? I cannot stress enough how little money that is to Bryce Harper. According to RosterResource, Harper is set to make $27,538,462 this season alone, and that’s not including the many more millions he makes through endorsement deals. You know how long it takes him to make 2.4 KGUs? Roughly one and a half pitches. He makes 2.4 KGUs 189 times per game. It is nothing to him. Snoop Dogg charges 13.3 KGUs for his videos. Why is Harper out here making videos for strangers – and promising delivery in 24 hours! – for 0.00327% of his annual salary? Is he that desperate for extra scratch? Is he also an Uber driver on the side? Surely, raw milk can’t be that expensive.

Even weirder, it appears that Harper has lowered his prices. In a review from last May, the customer said they paid $1,300. Also, they only gave Harper three stars. It was a birthday gift and, in true slapdash Cameo fashion, Harper never mentioned who it was from. Perhaps that’s why he lowered his prices. Maybe he was just responding to the cues he was getting from the marketplace. Regardless, Harper charges $899 now, which brings us to another important question: Why not just charge a round $900? This is almost as weird as the fact that Harper is on Cameo in the first place. Why is Harper out here using the same pricing strategy as Walmart? Would he have made it $899.99 if he could have? Is there a pricing algorithm involved here? Or did he just do the math and decide that he’s not quite worth a full $900? You know who knows that he’s worth $900? Jazz Chisholm Jr.

That’s right, Harper isn’t the only ballplayer on Cameo. Far from it. Which ballplayers are on Cameo? I looked at every single person who listed themselves under the baseball category so that I could answer that question. I also looked at football so that I could give you the delightful news that Bo Jackson (1.1 KGUs) and Brian Jordan (0.2) are listed under both categories. However, I am disappointed to report that John Smoltz (0.53) is not listed under golf.

If we count anyone who has played in the majors this year (which unfortunately disqualifies one of the Palacio brothers), then Cameo contains 41 current major leaguers. Their prices range from Chisholm’s 2.4 KGUs to Joey Lucchesi at 0.067. Joey, if you’re reading this, please know that you are worth more than 0.067 Kenny Gs. You are worth a lot more. I’ll put the list of current players at the bottom of the article, but let’s go through some highlights first.

First of all, Lucchesi isn’t the only one selling himself short. Trey Mancini, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Xavier Edwards are all under 0.2 KGUs. On the other hand, at 1.33 KGUs, Harrison Bader has the third-highest fee of any current ballplayer. In fact, Bader, Chisholm, and Harper are the only three current players whose videos cost more than Kenny G’s, and so far as I know, none of them can play the saxophone worth a damn. Honestly, you could field a pretty good team out of the players on Cameo. The outfield’s a little dicey, but how’s this for a lineup?

P: Spencer Schwellenbach
C: Drake Baldwin
1B: Bryce Harper
2B: Jazz Chisholm Jr.
SS: Xavier Edwards
3B: Blaze Jordan
LF: Jasson Domínguez
CF: Harrison Bader
RF: Starling Marte
DH: Kody Clemens

We’ll get back to the current players in a minute, but I should stress that they’re far from the only ones on Cameo. There are several current managers, television personalities, bloggers, podcasters, you name it. For reasons passing understanding, Yankees GM Brian Cashman is on Cameo for 0.53 KGUs. He’s the only GM on Cameo, and you have to wonder what percentage of people are buying a video just for the chance to rant at him. Bob Nightengale (0.16 KGUs) is on there if you think your friend would like a birthday message styled as breaking free agent news. For 0.09 KGUs, former umpire Dale Scott can break up with your boyfriend for you by shouting, “You’re out of here!” For some of these people, it’s almost a public service. Cameo is full of broadcasters and PA announcers, and I imagine it’s genuinely rewarding for them to provide the outgoing voicemail for a super-fan of their team. Seemingly every member of the Savannah Bananas is on Cameo. Seriously, there are 65 people associated with the Bananas, which leads me to believe that either they’re required to be there or they are massively underpaid.

There are a lot more former ballplayers than current ones. That includes more than a handful of Hall of Famers, but the vast majority retired within the past 10 or 15 years. It makes all the sense in the world. They’re out there working new, less fun jobs for new, less fun money. It must feel good to get an email telling you just how excited someone out there would be to hear from you, because you’re their favorite ballplayer. Surely, it doesn’t hurt to make a couple bucks and get the occasional reminder of what it was like when it felt like the whole world held you in that regard, when you used to play in front of packed houses and thousands of people chanted your name. Somebody should really write a song about that.

For 0.16 KGUs, you can get a video from Jim Morris, the pitcher-turned-teacher-turned-pitcher-again whose life was the basis of the 2002 movie The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid. (Side note: In that video, Morris will be shredded.) Ondřej Satoria, the Czech electrical technician who rose to fame when he struck out Shohei Ohtani during the 2023 World Baseball Classic, charges 0.08 KGUs, which makes sense because the Czech Extraliga pays nothing. It brings me no joy to tell you that John Rocker (0.17 KGUs) is on Cameo, but it does bring me a little bit of joy to tell you that his page includes a one-star review that ended, “I wish I didn’t buy this.” You’d be much better off paying the same price for Ozzie Guillen to deliver an expletive-laden birthday message, or, better yet, for Dave Stewart to simply stare down the camera without saying a word. Chris Sabo charges two-thirds of a Kenny G for a video, though I imagine the price skyrockets if you ask him to record it while wearing his old Rec Specs. Have I hooked you yet? Have I brought you back to the sweetness of your youth? Wouldn’t you be at least a little bit tickled to hear your name come out of the mouth of Tino Martinez or Mookie Wilson?

In truth, none of that sold me on the baseball Cameo experience. It wasn’t until I’d spent hours putting this article together than I came across a guy who made me feel the kind of nostalgia that inspires people to order a squinty-eyed video from a 1990s ballplayer. Mike Devereaux is on Cameo for 0.08 KGUs. I was obsessed with the Orioles as a child, and I loved Devereaux. My parents sold their house recently, and when they were boxing everything up, they came across a cache of my old drawings and schoolwork. You would not believe the lengths seven-year-old Davy would go to in order to cram the Orioles into the conversation. One fill-in-the-blank worksheet had a section that read, “The most important person in the world is ________.” That one was too easy. I scrawled “Cal Ripken Jr.”

Devereaux was Baltimore’s starting center fielder from before I could remember until I was 12, and for a short while there, he was a minor star. I adored the way he loped across the outfield at Memorial Stadium. And now he could be saying hi to me for just one-twelfth of a Kenny G. I couldn’t help clicking on his page and watching a sample video. That broke the spell.

The video showed Mike Devereaux, out on a walk around his neighborhood. The colors were washed out because of the bright midday sunshine, and his face was half hidden behind a hat and dark sunglasses. A couple seconds into the video, I realized it wasn’t a normal greeting. Devereaux was sending someone condolences on the death of their mother, and it’s now on Cameo as a sample for everyone to see. It’s a weird website, and I’m no closer to being able to tell you why Bryce Harper is still a part of it.