Pat McAfee tried to appease Major League Baseball by inviting Derek Jeter on his show for some Opening Day chatter on ESPN, until Fox allegedly quashed it.
Wednesday afternoon, The Pat McAfee Show teased a Thursday interview with Jeter to help usher in the start of the 2025 MLB season. Thursday afternoon, with the show decked out in Yankees gear, McAfee had to announce the Jeter interview would not be happening, noting the MLB on Fox analyst blamed his employer for canceling.
I’ve got some bad news..@derekjeter will not be joining the progrum today#PMSLive https://t.co/9xRkebiJcl pic.twitter.com/7kmQe7NmNX
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) March 27, 2025
“I’ve got some bad news,” McAfee said. “Derek Jeter was supposed to come on the show today. We marketed it. And we said we don’t like doing that, for good reason. Because if we come out and say, ‘Derek Jeter’s coming on the show on Opening Day!’ And everybody goes, ‘Wow, that is so cool that that’s happening.’ Myself included.”
“Derek Jeter’s not on the show today. Not Derek Jeter’s fault,” McAfee explained. “Actually got a personal phone call from Derek Jeter saying, ‘Hey, there’s broadcast stuff, networks are doing a thing. I’m not happy about it.’”
In defense of Fox, it doesn’t have any Opening Day games, while ESPN has two, including the Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers with Joe Buck on the call. It seems reasonable to assume Fox didn’t want to put one of its top analysts on The Pat McAfee Show to help ESPN promote its coverage if Opening Day. Especially on the heels of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred complaining about the lack of coverage the sport gets on ESPN’s daytime studio shows.
“There’s a lot of history between the networks,” McAfee said of Fox and ESPN. “So we’d just like to let everybody at Fox know, ‘We get it. Hey, we understand completely.’ And to our captain, your captain, down the road, bud. We were bummed out though.”
Or maybe it wasn’t really Fox at all. Maybe Jeter saw Stephen A. Smith threaten to throw punches at LeBron James after the hour-long LeBronversation on The Pat McAfee Show, and the former Yankees captain didn’t want to risk similar fallout.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com