64 things I’d rather do than watch 64 hours of Derek Jeter content

Yesterday, MLB Network announced that, beginning today, they will run 64 consecutive hours of Derek Jeter’s greatest moments. That’s right, everyone’s favorite Edge-haver will be honored by a nearly three-day long special. It will be hosted by Bob Costas, and will feature 13 of Jeter’s signature games.

Instead of promoting current players to get fans excited about the return of baseball, MLB Network will try to (poorly) replicate the publicity that ESPN received for their recent Michael Jordan documentary—which looked back on the fascinating career of the greatest basketball player to ever live—by focusing all of its programming on Jeter.

I, for one, can think of a million things I’d rather do than watch 64 hours of Jeter-focused programming. But for the sake of the continuity, I’ll stick to 64 things I’d rather do than watch 64 hours of Derek Jeter content.

1. Slam my hand in a car door.
2. Shove bamboo underneath my fingernails.
3. Go to pee in the dark only to realize I completely missed the toilet bowl and then clean it all up.
4. Take a Jacob deGrom fastball to the stones.
5. Spend 64 hours replaying the scene from “The Other Guys”
6. Accept the fact that Jeter is probably the last true multimedia star baseball will ever have.
7. Think about all the players who are or were miles better than Jeter that will never get 1/100^th of the attention for it.
8. Discuss this matter with a Yankees fan.
9. Contrast Jeter’s farewell tour to David Wright’s
10. Watch Wright’s farewell game in its entirety—all 13 innings, beginning to end—re-living my slip into the seventh circle of hell around the 11^th inning.
11. Listen to Fred Wilpon’s earnest opinions on various Mets players, past and present.
12. Follow in real time as billionaire MLB owners try to use a global pandemic to dismantle the players union and control more wealth while framing the players as the bad guys.
13. Watch SNY original programming.
14. Watch every Mets game from September 2007.
15. Watch every Mets game from September 2008.
16. Watch a compilation of Manny Acosta’s Mets lowlights.
17. Reflect on how the 2006 Mets had both Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez on their team but still were undone by a lack of pitching.
18. Think about Tom Glavine.
19. Re-watch the 2009 World Series.
20. Read my own writing and listen to people try to convince me it’s good.
21. Watch this Michael Bay movie about a pandemic that never ends.
22. Watch any Michael Bay movie.
23. Hire Michael Bay to make a movie about my life, narrated by Michael Kay.
24. Not be allowed to go to any fast food restaurant besides Arby’s for a full year.
25. Listen to WFAN talk shows for 64 consecutive hours.
26. Attend a Creed concert.
27. Listen to Chris Russo do a 30-minute TED talk about the history of labor issues in baseball.
28. Listen to Brodie Van Wagenen’s non-updates of Jed Lowrie’s injury status.
29. Go into a large crowd right now without any protective gear.
30. Hell, go into Manhattan and just straight up ask every person I see to just spit on me.
31. Watch these daytime talk shows in which G-list celebrities give their opinions that nobody asked for on topics which they are not qualified to speak on. Who is dying to hear Sharon Osbourne’s opinion on the Last Dance documentary?
32. Watch every Edwin Diaz blown save from 2019.
33. Have my memory wiped clean, Men in Black style, and have to re-watch the entire 2015 World Series with no knowledge of how it ends and experience those emotions all over again.
34. Accept the very real possibility of 2015 being the only time I ever see my favorite team in the World Series.
35. Come to terms with the fact that the Nationals actually won the World Series last year.
36. Listen to Jeff Wilpon dodge questions about payroll.
37. Not be allowed to use anything but Internet Explorer as my browser for the rest of my life.
38. Listen to any song that Train has put out since “Drops of Jupiter.” They should’ve just stopped there.
39. Re-watch the Maroon 5 Super Bowl half-time performance.
40. Watch 64 hours of HGTV home remodeling shows with cringey jokes and obviously scripted dialogue (my mother basically does this and I have NO idea how).
41. Listen to John Sterling attempt to make a personalized home run call out of my last name.
42. Listen to Gilbert Gottfried read me bad Tinder profiles for 64 hours.
43. Listen to Jose Reyes’s music.
44. Accept that Jose Reyes is probably getting his number retired because nobody cares about anything.
45. Ponder what the Mets rotation looks like next year after they let everyone walk and sign nobody.
46. Watch every Matt Harvey start from 2016-2019 as his velocity gradually decreases and he progressively breaks down more and more with each passing start.
47. Do the work I’m supposed to be doing while on the clock right now.
48. Go back to working at my college job of serving rich North Shore Long Islanders gourmet food at a country club for no tips.
49. Think about how they re-opened that country club earlier this month and have people who I still consider friends working five days a week and putting themselves at risk, still for no tips, working alongside people who previously had the virus, so that those rich people can eat gourmet meals and play golf.
50. Read all Barstool content and comments for the rest of the year.
51. Read zombie Deadspin.
52. Think about how Deadspin and Sports Illustrated were pillars of unique, ground-breaking sports journalism and have since been taken over by private equity ghouls who purged their workforce, but Dave Portnoy builds a shitty website around intentional misogyny, pointed bullying and toilet humor and makes millions and gets to be nationally recognized as some sort of innovative badass renegade.
53. Ponder the future of sports journalism.
54. Listen to MLB owners trying to defend laying off hundreds of minor league players in an orchestrated contraction of the minor leagues and try to convince us it’s “for the good of the game.”
55. Think about the hundreds of potentially promising careers cut short due to sheer corporate greed and an overwhelming indifference to the actual sport of baseball.
56. Ponder the future of baseball.
57. Make a TikTok account.
58. Watch this game from 2013 in which the Mets sent Collin McHugh, Robert Carson, Greg Burke, and Brandon Lyon to the mound and somehow only gave up eight runs.
59. Be Lenny Dykstra’s neighbor.
60. Be Lenny Dykstra’s Uber Driver.
61. Watch Mets vs. Marlins from September 26, 2016. You know the one.
62. Watch a 64-hour compilation of just Mike Pelfrey’s mound antics.
63. Watch Daisuke Matsuzaka pitch.
64. Sit down and actually make a list of 64 tortuous things I’d rather do than watch 64 hours of Derek Jeter content.

Feel free to list your own below!