There is no amount of money in the world that would make me want to sit through a four-hour meeting

There's nothing worse. When that little notification shows up in your inbox, you know your life is over: It's meeting time. Time to shuffle into a too-hot, too-small, too-crowded room that is slowly filling up with carbon dioxide and making you sluggish and sleepy.

If work is a video game, the meeting is the final boss. But rather than jumping out if its way and hammering it with magical lightning bolts, the only way to win is to stay awake and avoid answering any questions.

Which is why it certainly seems like Gerrit Cole's offseason is hell. The top free agent pitcher on the market recently had a meeting with the Yankees for four hours. Four hours. That's not a meeting: That's an endurance test.

I'm sorry, but even with Cole rumored to earn over $30 million a year on his next contract, I'm not sure that's enough to get me to sit through a series of four-hour meetings. I mean, let's say he does this with eight teams -- that's over a full day just of meetings. Can you really put a price on that kind of boredom?

Just what exactly are they talking about? "Hi, Gerrit. Do you like baseball and New York? Yes? Okay, our time here is done. We'll be in touch with your agent."

Let's say we even add in a tour of the facilities, a PowerPoint presentation featuring Photoshopped images of Cole winning the World Series in pinstripes, an "accidental" hallway meet and greet with Aaron Judge and a conversation of potential salary and we've still got -- what -- two hours of time to fill? Did they decide to catch a quick episode of "The Mandalorian" together to see if Cole reacted to Baby Yoda in the Yankee Way (namely, with a respectful nod and slight grin)? That meeting is long enough to watch all of "The Irishman" in one sitting with time left over and that just sounds absurd. It sounds painful. My butt hurts from even thinking about sitting for that long.

I thought the whole point of lucking into being blessed with the talent to play pro sports was that you never had to put on a suit, wake up at 7 a.m. or go to meetings. Instead, it seems that being the best player in the sport only makes you more like a businessman, what with diversifying a portfolio and having meetings that last all day.

Hopefully the fruit plate was good.