by Craig Carton
She picked me up as planned, and again I had that feeling. It was awesome. We went out that night with my friends, and I told her that while I was in my meeting the next day, she could hang out with my pals and that we would then go out alone at night. What I didn’t know was that there was no meeting. My parents had conspired with Marc Lawrence to throw me a surprise thirtieth birthday party. Kim would now meet every living relative I had all at once, and she had brought nothing appropriate to wear. The party went great, though. Kim can talk to anybody from any background as easily as I talk on the radio. It’s a great gift she has.
The weekend went so well that she agreed to fly out to Denver for Valentine’s Day. Before she left, I asked her to move out there with me. She agreed, and she moved to Denver for good on April 1. We were engaged three months later, married three months after that, and she was pregnant three months after that. It was a great love story. Kim was my first and only true love, and as corny and clichéd as that concept is, it’s the truth.
For the good adult stuff, the career success and the personal victories, I can only take some of the credit, as the majority of it goes to two other people: my ridiculously devoted and awesome wife, Kim, and my personal saint. He will remain unnamed because that’s how he’d like it to be. These are the only two people in the world whom I have ever let inside the wall that I keep up, and who know the real, unedited me.
I never would have gotten to New York as a radio talent if not for my wife, even though it was a stroke of luck that I did. I never would have had the rare opportunity to return, if not for the advice and friendship of my saint.
I am forever grateful because without them, I’d be waiting tables somewhere, living alone and not experiencing the joy that life can bring. I would also have more kids than Antonio Cromartie—and God only knows how many baby mamas.
We often talk about the great trades in sports, but the single greatest trade for me took place back in 1985. I was a camp counselor, and I fancied the lifeguard. She was friends with another counselor. He claimed dibs on her. As any man knows, dibs is an acceptable thing among friends. Rules of dibs: you can’t dib a girl just because you saw her first, and you can’t dib a girl just because she’s hot and you want to bang her. You can, however, dib a girl that you have put time into, and a girl that you met first and want to ask out.
Dibs does come with a statute of limitations. If you met a girl and called dibs, but then never called her or went out on a date with her, dibs are over after a couple of weeks. Similarly, if the girl doesn’t show an interest in you, you must undib her and give your crew a shot, and you have to put in a good word for whoever is next in line.
So here I was in 1985. This lifeguard had a smoking body. I had also just met Eric, who was a tennis counselor at the camp, and he said he knew her and was pursuing her. After two weeks of him getting nowhere, I told him it was time to undib her and man up. He agreed, with an interesting caveat. We had only been friends for a few weeks, so we didn’t know each other that well, but he had gone out drinking with me and my friends one night when my younger sister tagged along. My sister is attractive. She looks like me with boobs. She’s hot, and she liked to party and have a good time. Eric was smitten with her, as many men have been.
He proposed the following: Not only would he undib the lifeguard, but he would go out of his way to talk me up and set the path for a free and easy hookup. Then, in return, I would do the same for him with my sister.
Done deal.
I knew my sister wouldn’t like him, because he was preppy, and she liked guys to be more of a challenge. So on that summer day in 1985, I traded my sister for the lifeguard. This is the same girl I wrote about earlier, the one I dry-humped for an hour because I couldn’t get below her belt.
Anyway, as great as this trade was, it wasn’t close to the trade between Yankee pitchers who traded wives one off-season. Wives, mind you.
Fritz Peterson and Yankee teammate Mike Kekich swapped wives back in 1972. Now, we have all heard of guys swapping uniform numbers and even cars from time to time, but these two consummated the single craziest trade in the history of Major League Baseball—and that includes the Red Sox giving Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
The guys and their wives were close, as many teammates and their families are. They spent a considerable amount of time together in the off-season. Peterson and Kekich were even closer than most. They had been best friends since 1969. They were both married at about the same time, had kids the same ages, and lived in New Jersey near each other.
The swap happened in 1972, but since the world lacked TMZ or Deadspin, they kept it quiet until the spring of 1973. The announcement led New York Yankees general manager Lee MacPhail to say, “We may have to call off Family Day.” Fritz came on my radio show in 2011 and said that the real story was that they traded families, not just spouses. Each man just moved into the other guy’s house and inherited the kids, the dogs, the mortgage payments, and, yes, the bedroom, along with the other man’s wife.
Fritz got the better of the trade, as he is still married to Kekich’s former wife, and had four children with her. Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson divorced soon after. Peterson’s pitching suffered in 1973 after this “deal,” and he was booed in nearly every ballpark. In April 1974, the Yankees traded him to the Indians.
Kekich never won more games than he did in 1972, the year he won ten.
When I was growing up, the day the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition hit the newsstands was the biggest day of the year. It ranked right up there with my birthday, Halloween (when I was allowed to trick-or-treat), and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Decades before the Internet and sites like redtube.com, the swimsuit edition was a noncreepy way to ogle hot girls. The only other way at the time was to hope that your father had some Playboys hidden under his mattress, or that you had an older brother who could score one for you.
My father had a loaded gun under his mattress, but no porn. There are days I think that I might have been conceived in an immaculate manner. Now, I’m not saying I’m the son of God or anything; I’m just saying my parents seemed to be antiromantic. And that’s probably a good thing. Who wants to see their folks getting it on?
I have always felt that the SI swimsuit edition was more erotic than Playboy. You could close your eyes and imagine a hot girl in a bikini coming out of the ocean and interacting with you to the point of getting it on. With Playboy, there was nothing left to the imagination, and as a kid of the 1970s and early ’80s, I’d say the women had a grooming problem, too. There was this one girl though, a Spanish vixen named Velasquez whom I had a major crush on. There was nary a day when I was thirteen that she and I didn’t have a romantic private moment.
As time went on, the swimsuit edition became less relevant. There was the monthly Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog that featured a hot blonde with see-through nipple tops; then Victoria’s Secret started mailing out catalogs, and everything changed. Long gone were the days when Kathy Ireland in a one-piece suit was enough to get a young boy through the night after his parents told him to turn off the radio and go to bed.
Also long gone were big-boned girls wearing bloomers. In were thin, almost anorexic big-chested girls of the type you just don’t see walking the streets that much. I’d like to know where they find these girls. I don’t think I have ever seen a “model” that wasn’t a real model, and I live in New York City, where there are more pretty women per square foot than any other city in the world. Yet I never see this model type anywhere. There must be some European or Brazilian factory where these women are made.
But then something went terribly wrong. In a move of desperation, SI started putting athletes and their attractive wives in the edition. At that moment they jumped the shark, and I stopped buying it until Irina Shayk graced the cover in 2011.
Isn’t it enough that the athletes are good-looking and loaded? Now we have to have their hot wives thrown in our faces, too.
If you are a wealthy professional athlete, why get married at all? Derek Jeter should be the model for all pro athletes. He dated actress Minka Kelly for a long time. You never saw Derek get married or profess his undying love for a woman, ever. When word spread that Minka was spending some extra time with a movie costar, Jeter did the Jeterian thing. He moved on, and began dating a twenty-two-year-old Ralph Lauren model. All single men should live their lives by the WWDJD code: What Would Derek Jeter Do?
Better than that was the story from 2008 when not one or two, but three girls claimed to have spent the night with Jeter at a hotel in Florida. All three complained that after kicking them out, Jeter wouldn’t validate their parking. That’s right, you don’t validate parking. You’re Derek Jeter. They are lucky to have been with you. They can pay for their own fucking parking! And even now, you don’t see him getting married.
A-Rod learned the lesson a little late, but he learned it. He was married to an attractive gal named Cynthia, had a few kids with her, and then got caught with blond strippers in Canada. Why’d he get married in the first place? Most people lashed out against him for the infidelity, but not me. I was upset that he got married. When you’re a rock star like A-Rod, how dare you not enjoy the many options out there? I would be disappointed if guys like A-Rod didn’t take advantage of who they were and conquer as many broads as possible.
Tiger Woods fell victim. Now, Tiger is a special case. Perhaps the most vilified guy of the last decade, and for what? Ooh, he cheated on his wife. How dare he? Tiger proves my point better than anyone, and here’s why. His ex-wife Elin is a beautiful blond model. There isn’t a guy on the planet who wouldn’t want her to be on his arm, or to have the chance to sleep with her. And yet here is Tiger not just cheating on her, but cheating on her with every vagina in the free world. He either got bored banging her, or he realized how many girls would sleep with him, no matter what state or country he was in. I imagine he figured, This is my birthright; if I don’t do this, I’m an idiot and letting mankind down.
It may be hard to understand, but somewhere in the world, there is a guy tired of banging the woman he is with, no matter how hot she is. Case in point: Halle Berry has been through how many husbands? And she might be the hottest woman of all time. Jennifer Aniston can’t keep a man, Kate Moss can’t keep a man, Bar Refaeli can’t hang on to Leonardo DiCaprio . . . All stunning women, and all of them unable to keep a man. Maybe they have a fatal flaw. Maybe they are lousy in bed. Or maybe it goes back to the fact that any guy who can land a girl like them can also land other girls like them, so they do. Then there is Eva Longoria, another hot actress. She married Tony Parker of the NBA, and he did what I expected of him. He was hitting on girls at his own wedding. She then moved on to Jets starting QB Mark Sanchez, meaning certain doom for Jets fans. As the Jets spiraled out of control during the 2012 NFL season and Sanchez played poorly, she promptly ended their relationship. The girl likes winners apparently.
Recently there have been stories of guys getting in so deep with their wives or girlfriends that the relationship turns violent. I don’t understand how young wealthy athletes can act this way. Brandon Marshall is a multimillionaire wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, and in 2011 his wife stabbed him in the stomach. She took a knife out of the kitchen drawer and stabbed him.
She went to jail for assault with a deadly weapon, and fortunately for Brandon, he survived. As soon as I heard the story, my first reaction was “How could Brandon allow this woman to get so close to him and be so in love with him that she would be driven to stab him?” You have to love somebody a lot to stab them with a kitchen knife in the stomach. The only way to be driven to that level of anger is to love someone so much you get pissed at an equal intensity when something happens.
I made two calls the day I got fired from CBS SportsLine. One of the first calls I made in Florida was to a guy named Rick Scott. Rick was the only sports radio consultant that I knew of in America. He had been after me for years trying to convince me to leave Philly, and later Florida, for one of many jobs he knew about for the stations he consulted.
I called him under the following premise: Being syndicated was great, but none of the stations I was on were in Florida. I missed being a part of a local community and talking about the local teams with the local fans. I wasn’t lying. I also never would have called if I hadn’t been fired. I understand the local fan base and play off of it, either as a rahrah hometown guy, or by going the other way when appropriate. That’s what I do best.
Rick was glad to hear from me. He suggested KKFN The Fan in Denver. He said I’d be perfect for them and told me he would call the program director there to set up a conference call. They were an AM station with the rights to the Avalanche hockey games. They had no ratings, and not a single show anybody really cared about or was passionate about.
The second call I made the day I was fired was to longtime friend Marc Lawrence. Marc is one of the foremost sports handicappers in the country. He and I had forged a close friendship when I was living in Cleveland. We had already partnered in some small businesses, and had stayed in contact throughout the years. Marc was a frequent guest on my shows. While I was at CBS SportsLine, I became familiar with an offshoot company they started called Vegas Insider. It was a website where you could buy picks from a couple of handicappers.
The problem with the site and the business in general is that the handicappers are shady. Marc Lawrence was the most honest guy I had ever met. When he lost, he told you. He never gave out both sides of the same game. He was a trend handicapper and was unwavering in using past trends to pick winners. More than that, he was a brilliant marketer: AFC Game of the Month, MLB American League Winner of the Year, and so on. Handicappers market to desperate gamblers who feel like they need an edge. If you are predisposed to gamble and you see a reputable guy who admits when he loses touting his game of the year, you will buy the information, no matter what the cost. It’s like selling ice in the Sahara.
I had run my own gambling den from my parents’ living room when I was in junior high school. After much nagging on my part, they bought me a video game console called Intellivision. It came loaded with a casino game, and I began playing roulette, craps, and blackjack. Soon I figured out that gambling was not only fun, but could also be an easy way to make money. I was a latchkey kid, so I started having my friends come over and play with me, betting with baseball cards, gum, anything on hand. Word spread, and kids I’d never even met started showing up at my house to gamble. I ran the casino for almost a full year. I was making serious money for a kid, and acquiring more sporting goods than I knew what to do with. When kids couldn’t pay me in cash, they paid in tangible goods. I could have started my own shop.
Sadly, though, like most illegal enterprises, this business came to an abrupt end. One of the kids wagered a brand-new baseball glove, and he lost, so he left me the glove. A few days later his dad wanted to have a catch, and when his son couldn’t find the glove, the dad went ballistic. The kid started to cry and ratted me out. His dad showed up at my house and told my parents what was going on. I returned the glove to the kid and then took the belt whooping of a lifetime. I never went back to Intellivision, but my love of gambling continued. I was intrigued when I learned about Vegas Insider.
I felt that Marc and I could do a better job than Vegas Insider. I called him up and explained the concept. At this point Marc had no Internet presence, and he knew he needed one. Over the course of an hour we had a tentative agreement, which we later finalized at dinner the following week.
We would build a company from scratch called Vegas Experts. Marc would supply a few things, and so would I. Marc would fund the project with a $30,000 loan. He would provide all the content for the site, and in his genius, we would guarantee all picks on the site with a pay-only-after-you-win formula. This set us apart. If you bought information on a game for $10 and the pick we gave you lost, you wouldn’t have to pay for it. Your credit card would only get charged if the
pick we gave you was a winner.
This was revolutionary in the industry, and it set us apart. Marc’s final contribution was also ahead of its time. He knew that, like him, other handicappers had no Internet presence, either. We would bring in the top twelve most respected handicappers in the world and offer their picks on our site as well. The handicappers would give us 50 percent of their take, and we would provide them their entire Web presence for free.
I was going to run the company day-to-day, take a $3,000-a-month salary, and own 50 percent of the company with Marc. I would be responsible for building the site myself.
I had no idea how to do that, so I bought a book on programming and read it cover to cover. I built the website one page at a time from scratch during marathon eighteen-hour days. I also hired a programming friend I had met at SportsLine to do the back-end financial-transaction programming. That was far beyond the scope of what I could do as a self-taught programmer.
Five days after our dinner, we had a contract to start the business. Almost forty-five days after that, we had a website up and running, and producing income.
As I was building this company, Rick Scott and The Fan in Denver were pursuing me. It took about three weeks for me to connect with Rick and Tim Spence, the program director. Tim was impressed with my background, but he wanted me to come to Denver to meet with him and even do a show on his station so he could hear me for himself. I had sent the guy several hours of my shows and a compilation “best of” CD, which I had always hated to do. He knew what I sounded like and knew who I was, yet like a circus monkey, I would have to perform for my keep.