by Craig Carton
I went back to my office and waited for the call. I wasn’t alone. The entire morning show staff came into the office. They expected a show when Mike called, and that’s just what they got. The phone rang. I let it ring again and again before picking it up.
“Hello?”
“Is this Craig?”
“Yes it is. Who is this?”
“It’s Mike.”
“Mike who?” I figured I’d fuck with him right out of the gate.
He raised his voice. “Mike Francesa. What did you say about me on your show today?”
“Nothing.”
We went back and forth cursing at each other like sailors until it was clear neither one of us was going to give any ground. I hung up on him. He never called back. Now I was getting ready to be the WFAN morning show host, and Mark asked me if I would agree to have lunch with Mike prior to our first show. It was a smart play by Mark to get us together, with the idea being for some kind of détente, and to let us know we were now on the same team. Mark thought that if Mike got to spend some time with me, man-to-man and face-to-face, Mike would be more than willing to support Boomer and me as Imus’s replacement.
The lunch was set up for 11:30 at the Cup Diner in Astoria, a neighborhood place across from the radio station, which was in the heart of Queens. I met Mark at the station and we walked over together. We sat down at a table and chatted a bit about the show until Mike arrived.
Mike lumbered in with a limp and a look of disgust on his face. He sat down, we ordered lunch, and then the fun began. Mike was wearing dark sunglasses. It was a beautiful August day outside. There was no need for sunglasses inside, but he never took them off. He also refused to look at me when we spoke. He would arch his head to the right and to the left, but he would never look right at me.
What he had to say was even more laughable. Mike explained how, in his opinion, our show had no chance of making it and while he could make it work, I would have no chance to make Boomer a solid radio guy every day of the week. He told me over and over how we had no chance, but that he would, if given the same opportunity. I’ll never know why he wanted to make that point to me, but he made it loud and clear. The only positive thing he said was that he felt if Chernie (his nickname for Mark) felt that I was the guy, then I was the guy. He wished me good luck as he walked out of the dinner.
People always want to know whether we don’t get along with the other hosts. In truth, we get along with everyone. Sadly, though, we don’t interact with any of the other shows’ hosts on a regular basis. We broadcast out of our own studio, which precludes us from seeing Joe and Evan, our midday show hosts, and we are long gone from the building by the time Mike Francesa gets there.
Nobody has ever done a sports show at WFAN the way Boomer and I do it, and as a result, the other hosts decided early on that since we were not doing straight sports shows like every other show on the station, we were not part of their fraternity. That never made sense to me. The better we do, the better they do. We didn’t care what they thought from square one. Once we became successful, we didn’t care much about them at all. Only Steve Somers was gracious to us from the day we started.
Despite the other hosts’ predictions, Boomer and I wound up getting both time and attention from the listeners. One year after we began, we accomplished something that had never been done before in the history of WFAN, even with the legendary Imus hosting mornings: we were number one in every male demographic, young and old, and had become the highest-rated show on the entire station. Boomer & Carton had arrived—but more importantly, so had I.
A number of people have referred to me as the Howard Stern of sports radio. I must say, I don’t understand why this is said as a negative. I view it as a huge compliment. Howard Stern is the greatest broadcaster in the talk radio genre, and not even arguably; he changed the format for talk radio forever. He was and is a trailblazer, and I was a big fan of his growing up. To be compared to him is better than any dopey award I could win.
Among the highlights of my five-plus years at WFAN Radio, in no particular order:
1. My first day on the air, and being able to say “Boomer & Carton on Sports Radio 66 WFAN.”
2. Playing goalie in full hockey gear twice at Madison Square Garden for the Garden of Dreams charity, and then stopping Boomer and a bunch of legendary New York Rangers in a shootout. Of course, I found out later that the guys were aiming for me, instead of the goal. But hey, a save is a save!
3. Seeing my kids playing pickup ball with Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics, right before Boomer and I got to do the play-by-play of a legitimate NBA regular season game between the Nets and Celtics—which by itself was awesome.
4. Flying on a sponsor’s private jet with Dan Marino, and trying to explain to Dan the concept of the movie My Best Friend’s Girl (which I lent to him, and have not yet had returned). And on the same flight, Dan asking me and Boomer if there was something wrong with our producer Al Dukes: “something hereditary?”
Boomer is an interesting guy, and I’ve gotten to know him very well over the years. When we had been together for just a few months, we decided to throw a staff holiday party. We invited every member of our staff and their spouse or significant other. We planned the party at the downtown Manhattan Bowlmor bowling lanes. When we showed up there, we had reserved two lanes, but rather than have a laid-back, fun bowling experience, I met “Competitive Boomer” for the first time.
Most pro athletes have a competitive streak that sets them apart from mere mortals—that is, nonprofessional athletes. Boomer set us up on teams with the rule that you couldn’t be on the same team as your significant other. This was a great idea. It gave everybody a chance to interact with people they might not know, or know very well.
Boomer and I captained our teams, and before we bowled the first ball, I looked in his direction and said, “A hundred dollars a game. Me versus you.” We shook on it. Game on; I was pumped.
The first game went to Boomer by a healthy eighteen pins. My team beat his, though, so he was pissed. He started to read his team the riot act about paying attention and not losing focus. It was hysterical—the notion of losing a coed bowling game bothered him! I started to pick up on that, thinking I could get under his skin and distract him.
Sometimes I’m not that bright. The man played in a Super Bowl and led his team to a go-ahead score with less than two minutes left against the San Francisco 49ers. There was no way I was going to get under his skin at a bowling alley.
Shockingly, though, I took game two, and so did my team. You could see the steam coming out of Boomer’s ears when the lanes went black. He ordered someone on the staff to go to the front desk and turn the lanes back on because we weren’t done yet.
Boomer Esiason doesn’t like a tie, and he doesn’t like to lose. He kicked everyone off both lanes and told them there wouldn’t be a third game. There would, however, be a me-versus-him battle to see who won head-to-head for the evening. We were tied, no money no foul, but someone had to win and it might as well be him.
We went frame by frame, and neither one of us ever led by more than a few pins until he threw a bad shot in the eighth and I had a strike. By the time I was done, Boomer needed to throw three straight strikes to beat me by one pin. Anything less than that, and I’d win. I was muttering under my breath as he started to throw his first ball, hoping to get him out of his game.
No luck—he threw a strike.
Two to go. The second ball was again—no doubt about it—a strike. I couldn’t help but smile. Neither could he, but his was a stern, closed-lips type of smile.
Unless the last ball of the game was a strike, he’d lose. I was ready to jump up and down.
Boomer threw the ball down the lane with a curve like Kate Upton’s hips. The ball sped down in perfectly smooth fashion and dropped all ten pins. Boomer beat me by one. Damn it, I lost!
We shook hands like men. He whispered to me, “I’m a pro athlete, and you aren’t. And you aren’t Joe
Montana, either.”
Nice to meet you, Competitive Boomer. That night started a five-plus-year battle in everything from Ping-Pong, to pool, to golf, to you-name-it.
Several times over the years, Boomer has decided to go on a diet. More than that, he has latched on to one diet fad or another, like millions of other Americans who want to lose weight. During our second year together, he signed up for a meal service that brought meals to your house. You could eat only what they gave you. One of those meals was a bland chicken and rice dish.
During that fall, I traveled with Boomer to every Monday night football game he was broadcasting from. Boomer is an excellent analyst on NFL broadcasts, and he does the games nationally on Dial Global, formerly Westwood One. While he broadcast the games, Al Dukes and I would watch it from the press box or a sponsor’s VIP box. Once we were down in New Orleans for a game, and Boomer had brought his prepackaged meal with him. I happened to bump into his assistant on her way to the kitchen to heat it up.
I stopped her in her tracks and took the container to the dining hall set up for the media. Being New Orleans, there was a fresh bowl of gumbo just waiting to be eaten. I took three huge soup ladles of gumbo and poured it on top of his calorie-conscious meal. I gave it back to his assistant and then watched as she gave it to Boomer.
Boomer was in full game mode, so he didn’t notice what I had done. He lapped up the entire thing in a matter of seconds.
The next morning, I asked him how his diet was going. He said he had the single best dinner he’d ever had on a diet. He went to great lengths to describe the gumbo, the sauce, and so on. Unable to contain myself, I started giggling like a schoolgirl. It wasn’t long before he knew exactly what I was laughing at. It was a good thing I took pictures to show him exactly what I did. Two days later, he dropped the diet.
One of the biggest moments for any radio host is the chance to be on-air when breaking news hits. Well, on July 13, 2010, Boomer and I had our chance. We were doing our show that morning when an old friend, Erik Olesen, a VP of promotions for a major record label, came by with an up-and-coming band who had never done a North American radio interview.
The name of the band was and still is Neon Trees. They are huge now, but back then they only had one hit that they were promoting, and they had never been on the radio. We were sort of a guinea pig tryout. The thought was that if they could hang with me and Boomer, they could do any radio show. Their breakthrough hit was a song called “Animal.” It was a rocking song, so our male audience was sure to enjoy a little taste of it. Plus their drummer has big boobs and is a huge Boomer fan from Cincinnati.
It was the perfect setup.
The band came in with their instruments, we fooled around with them for a bit, and then they started to play their song. The only reason a band gets up at the buttcrack to do a radio show is to let the audience hear them.
Just as the band started to play, our producer Al Dukes whispered into my ear that there was big news. It had just been confirmed that George Steinbrenner, the eighty-year-old Yankees owner, had died. Through our talk-back button that lets me speak to him without anyone else hearing, I asked if he was sure it was 100 percent confirmed. He was.
So at that moment we needed to be talking about Steinbrenner, and not playing Neon Trees music. I waited as long as I could, but ultimately in mid-song during their first-ever radio appearance, I had to cut them off. I stopped the song and reported to New York that George Steinbrenner had died.
Millions of people tuned in to hear Boomer and me talk about his passing. If they had heard about it through the grapevine and then decided to tune in to us for details, for the first minute or so, they heard “Animal” instead. We got quite a few calls during that show.
We have a lot of fun with our callers, and I feel very territorial about them. I don’t like it when people phone the radio station all day long, regardless of who is on the air. I believe that if they call us, they shouldn’t call any other show, and I feel especially strong about the callers out of whom we make characters.
One of my favorite callers for about a month was a guy named Jay from Brooklyn. He had a thick Jamaican accent and lived with his mom. Anytime he tried to call in to win things from us, we wound up making him ask his mom for permission. It became a funny weekly bit. But then one day I heard him on the midday show, the afternoon show, and also on another radio station, trying to get the same bit started! We don’t take his calls anymore.
My favorite caller of all time is either Joe D. from Brooklyn or Lou from Staten Island. Joe is a big-time Yankee fan. More specifically than that, he worships the memory of Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Joe has a distinctive voice, and one that I can mimic. He also hates it when anybody makes fun of his two idols. I do both, of course. Joe once told a story about how he saw DiMaggio from a diner window, and when he made eye contact, DiMaggio nodded in his direction. This gesture made Joe think that they were friends. Hysterical!
We once invited Joe from Brooklyn into the studio and treated him like King for a Day, and he loved it. Two days later, I took a shot at DiMaggio, and Joe has never called us again. Instead he calls every other show to take shots at us. I love that guy.
Lou from Staten Island was, I figured, a young alcoholic with a major speech impediment when he drank—apparently all day, every day. We once had him convinced that Thanksgiving was in August, and that the Giants had a player named “Botchagaloop Jones,” whom he even got to speak to, although it was just Al Dukes pretending to be Jones. I once bet Lou a case of Twizzlers (which he called something entirely different—he called them Tweezers) on the outcome of a game. Lou and Joe, for that matter, are real. They are not doing shtick, and they don’t know that the joke is always on them. That’s why they are my favorite callers.
After disappearing for nine months, Lou called us in October 2012. He sounded like a normal human being, lucid and articulate. Apparently he’d been addicted to OxyContin and some other pills. He is healthy now, which is good for him (but bad for us).
One thing that callers often ask is what Boomer is really like, and whether we are really friends. Yes, we have become very good friends, and while I am sure that he would like to spend even more time with me, I do need a break from him from time to time. Boomer promised that he would work with me until he was seventy-five, so I’ve got twenty-three more years to go.
In the winter of 2008, after I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, I had a bad case of hemorrhoids—so bad that I needed a hemorrhoidectomy, which means total removal of the ’roids by a surgeon and his knife. I had the surgery the week before we flew to Arizona for the first of the two Giants-Patriots Super Bowls.
The surgery was a success, but the recovery was going to be two weeks of pure hell, according to my doctor. I laughed that off, as I have a high tolerance for pain and had endured much more serious operations. But damn if he wasn’t right. It was worse than childbirth, for sure. Every uncontrollable twitch of anal muscle sent me through the roof. My body wanted to go to the bathroom, but my mind opposed the idea. I had loaded up on Vicodins to the point I had to be rivaling Brett Favre in his Vicodin heyday.
The problem was, the Vikes constipated me. I was completely backed up. The doctor instructed me to take a spoonful of laxative every twenty minutes until I finished an entire jar of it. (Normally it says not to exceed a few tablespoons a day.) I finished the jar, and nothing. No movement at all. The problem was, the next day I had to get on a plane and fly to Arizona.
I woke up at two in the morning with a strange feeling. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I had to get up take a shower to start my long day. I got into the shower, and then all of a sudden without warning, I exploded and released a week’s worth of shit. It was up to my ankles. When I was done, it looked like a herd of donkeys had taken a dump.
I took the handheld sprayer and started to try to spray it down the drain. All of a sudden my wife came into the bathroom and said, “Holy shit, what is that?
” I told her it was exactly what she just said, and went about my business. Sadly, part of that business was putting on an adult diaper.
I was also leaking the most foul-smelling ass juice any human has ever released. This was the worst recovery ever. My wife, Al Dukes, and I boarded the plane and sat in coach on the five-hour flight. I was miserable. We were packed in like sardines, and I couldn’t get up—not because I wasn’t allowed, but if I did, the reek coming from my diaper would have resulted in us having to make an emergency landing.
While we were at the Super Bowl broadcasting, we were fortunate enough to have our own private room, which made it easier for big-name guests to be on our show without worrying about being bombarded by producers from a hundred other radio stations who were scouting around for guests.
During one commercial break, we had about six Hall of Famers in the room milling about, as well as the coaches for the Super Bowl, Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick. I couldn’t stand up to greet any of them because it was the same deal as on the plane. Boomer knew my problem. During a moment of relative silence, he said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey, Craig! Be respectful and stand up and shake everyone’s hands since they are kind enough to be on our show.” I didn’t budge, and then had to explain to six Hall of Famers and the two Super Bowl coaches that if I stood up, I would knock them out. It was a great moment, even though I have terrible flashbacks to those days. And I still owe you one, Boomer.
Boomer has a son, Gunnar, who has cystic fibrosis. Boomer started the Boomer Esiason Foundation after Gunnar was diagnosed, and has since raised over $100 million toward finding a cure. One of the most touching and lasting things Boomer has ever said to me is that he wakes up and goes to bed every day of his life with only one real goal. That goal is to try to find a way to guarantee that his son will outlive him. I signed on early to help out with the foundation in any way I could, and am proud to say that Gunnar has graduated from college. By all accounts he is doing great.
