Airing a Home Run Derby Marathon is Great, But What if We Made it Better?

Do you people want to know the horrible truth or do you want to see sluggers sock some dingers? If your answer is the latter, ESPN2 has you covered. On March 26, originally slated as Major League Baseball's Opening Day, the network will show an eight-hour Home Run Derby marathon beginning at 6 p.m. Contests from 2015, and 2017-2019 will be pulled back, back, back from the archives.

That is a lot of tape-measure blasts and kids falling down after misjudging the carry of a fly ball. Since it's on television, people will watch it. They enjoy homers. But this morning, I'm wondering if there's a niche content opportunity down the line catering to purists like myself.

Surely with all this downtime, we can get our best tape-cutters on the project of putting together several hours of situational-hitting highlights. Surely dozens of viewers would tune in to see perfectly executed hit-and-runs, grounders to the right side of the infield that moved runners from second to third with fewer than two outs, and sacrifice flies that made it just far enough to render a throw to the plate useless.

Throw in a few drag bunts, a couple of shift-beating singles, and some fighting off of tough two-strike pitches and, hey, we might have a stew going.

Now, if you're thinking this is a pipe dream, keep thinking that. I'll bank on there being enough pure baseball nerdom out there to make something viable. Join me on the ground floor advocating for this to become a future marquee event at All-Star Game weekends.

The Korean Baseball Organization has already shown such an endeavor can really pop.

So, there it is. My earnest plea that I both hope to see and never want to become a reality all at the same time. As always, my brain is open free of charge to any media bigwig who reads the site. Literally the least I can do in these times.