Occasionally, I pass the time pondering what I want written on my tombstone. Morbid? Perhaps. But we all have our hobbies and whittling bores me. My latest iteration:

“Here lies Mikey D. He went broke trying to watch sports on TV.”

No, really. Have you noticed? The costs are oppressive. And then the vagaries of installing apps and remembering passwords forced me to lose my sunny disposition long ago.

If you know me, you know that my passions are embedded into three institutions: The Yankees, football Giants and Boston College. I realized the other day that to watch my teams play now, I need access to 13 different networks. (In my childhood, I needed four: Channels 3, 8, 30 and 11. They were all free.)

The 13 networks: CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, ESPN, FS1, YES, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Peacock, ACC Network, CBS Sports Network and now something called the CW. To accomplish all this, I dumped Frontier four years ago for YouTube TV, which was about $50 cheaper per month. Plus, it had all the channels I needed at the time. For two weeks. Then it decided to get rid of YES. That meant I could no longer watch the Yankees (although a friend showed me a little trick to watch the games that worked for a bit, but sadly, no longer.)

Soon, YouTube TV dumped NESN, too. So I went to Fubo for $23 more a month. That was fine until I realized that Fubo didn’t have TBS, TNT or TruTV, which meant I was shut out for most of March Madness. Last winter, I went to the DirecTV Stream (essentially DirecTV without the dish on the roof) for $25 more than Fubo for full access to YES.

Add all this to paying for Prime, Peacock and Apple. But wait, there’s more.

Earlier this week, I realized that after BC’s football game Saturday at Louisville, its next two games are on the CW and CBS Sports Network. I can’t access CW at all. And I would have to pay an extra $14.99 per month for the next level sports package on DirecTV for CBS Sports Network. Turns out some BC basketball games are on the CBS Sports Network, too, this year. So this isn’t a one-time thing.

CW, which is found in Connecticut on Channel 20, is offered on no streaming service for live sports. Other streaming services offer its programming on demand, but not live. So to watch CW, I’d have to ditch the DirecTV stream and get regular cable, whose skyrocketing costs are the reason I went to streaming in the first place.

I had to call the great Billy Bono, who tends bar every Saturday at the Birdseye in New London, to reserve a TV for next Saturday so I can watch BC vs. Virginia.

This is all to watch my crummy teams play.

Here is a question I ask multiple times daily on a variety of topics: Why does it have to be this difficult?

In this case, I just want to watch the game. In the old days, it was Sunday mass at 11, dinner at 12, the Giants at 1 … and by 1:03 the language in the house suggested we’d all forgotten what we just learned at church. But the Giants were always on Channel 3 on Sunday at 1. This week, they’re on Prime, Thursday at 8.

I get letters and emails from readers frequently about such topics. They don’t like my replies. There’s really nothing I can do about it (thus making this particular rant useless, too.) I usually tell them to subscribe to a service that carries the network(s) in which they are interested.

But I’ve learned that’s evolved into an insufficient answer. No one cable system or streaming service is one-stop shopping any longer. Besides, who can afford it or keep it straight anyway? This remote, that remote, this password, that app. All to watch a sporting event.

Now I understand this is the very definition of a first world problem. I’m grateful I can afford it (mostly). But the absurdity of this leaves me as the old man shaking his fist at the clouds. Nobody can fix it. It’s going to get worse.

Example: The first playoff football game NBC airs in January will be shown exclusively on Peacock. Other channels are pondering the direct-to-consumer route, meaning we’ll all pay more. And we’ll continue to do so because it’s what we consider our entertainment.

Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute. In this case, it’s your gullible narrator. Meantime, he’ll be sorting through 13 networks just to watch his underachieving teams. Oh, joy.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro