Original subtitles

In 2016 we faced an attack of a new kind.

The Russians hacked democracy.

The Russian interference only worked

because America was a vulnerable target.

In the alleged collusion...

These allegations are just absolutely preposterous.

Of course Russians preferred Trump because Trump said

that he preferred Russians.

The following is a presentation of HBO Sports.

- My name is Craig Carton.

I have lived through the most public,

vicious, self-inflicted fall from grace.

I was the cohost of "Boomer and Carton,"

one of the most successful sports radio shows in America.

I fought my way to the top,

and for ten years, I had the dream job.

But it was never enough.

Never enough to make me happy.

Never enough to chase away the demons

that have haunted me since childhood.

I had it all.

The career. The beautiful country house.

I made more than $2 million a year.

And now, it's all gone.

I've hurt my wife and kids deeply,

and I've promised to shield them

from the public spotlight that's on me.

But I am going to tell you my story

of how stupidity, bad decisions,

and a secret addiction cost me everything,

including the one thing I took for granted:

my freedom.

- Cross Island Parkway northbound left lanes

locked up with a crash by the Grand Central.

- Offer ends March 29th.

Terms and restrictions...

- With great offers on everything

from airfare to accommoda...

- It's Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton on The FAN.

- Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton on The FAN

and, of course, worldwide.

September 4, 2007,

was the very first show for "Boomer and Carton,"

and ten years later,

it was the number one most listened to morning show

in New York and in America.

There you go.

- What am I doing with my life?

- "Boomer and Carton" became a sensation.

Boomer had the big name, but Carton had the skills.

He had that magic.

Now sometimes, he'd go a little too far,

but he could really make a show out of nothing.

- We're doing what manly men do.

We're exfoliating.

We have cucumbers on our eyes

and we're picking football games.

Hit it, boys.

- I have never met anybody like him in my life.

He is like a cross between a Martian

and, like, Don Rickles.

- So LeBron James being a loser,

a big choke-arse, a big donut, a big nothing.

At 6:00, when the music rolled

and the light went on,

something just overcame him, an energy

a passion for what he was doing.

- I win. Yes!

Whoo!

Adrienne!

I did it!

- In terms of morning sports hosts,

I would put him at the top of the list.

I couldn't even think of a close second.

- Jerry, good morning. How you doing, buddy?

- Craig, don't ever lose your sense of humor.

- I never will. I've seen myself naked.

- Craig comes from a line of shock jocks.

You know, he's sort of happy to portray himself

as a bit of an asshole.

- He got a reaction, no matter what you thought of him.

You wanted to throw stuff at your radio,

or you wanted to be one of his gang.

- It really was a "love him or hate him" relationship.

- If you wanna go into it, let's go into it,

but not today, because I got other people who wanna talk

and you're boring me.

Good-bye.

- I mean, he had the will to do some stuff

that was just outrageous.

I mean, he walked across the Brooklyn Bridge

in a Speedo with a sausage in his pants.

I mean, what are we talking about?

- This business is about ratings and revenue,

and Craig Carton has proven he can get both.

6:03 a.m.

Good morning, everybody!

Boomer Esiason, Craig Carton on The FAN.

As you wake up this morning,

the New York Jets have been knocked out

of the post season,

but in addition to that,

what else do you need to see

to understand that Mike Woodson can't coach?

On the radio, I'm a big mouth, I'm loud, I'm obnoxious,

it's boisterous, and I'm successful,

and I'm gonna throw that in everyone's face,

because that's the type of show I did.

You have 500 other choices on the radio

and guess what you do.

You listen to me.

'Cause you can't live without me.

- Craig's on-air personality is an act.

It's a very polished, well-rehearsed act.

- He was funny, he was edgy, he was into the show,

but at the end of the day, when the show was off,

he became one of the nicest people

you ever wanna meet.

- There are a lot of different angles to that guy.

There's Craig, who is very thoughtful,

very kind, very timid, very shy,

and then there's Carton.

- You have to listen with your ears,

not with your fat face.

- And he's an asshole.

- But off the air, he's kind.

He's generous.

- He also cared about charities that he worked with.

You know, fire department, police department,

the 9/11 first responders.

- You're the brave men and women that show up,

and we're indebted to you for doing that.

- He has compassion for kids who are misunderstood,

'cause I think that's how he sees himself

when he was growing up.

- When I say "camp," you say "Carton."

Carton!

Carton!

- I love Craig.

I owe a lot to him for our success on radio.

We were a team.

We had the world by the balls, man.

We had built the brand,

and the brand was unbelievably popular,

and he went off the wagon

or however you wanna describe it

and just, you know, ruined what we all had.

- July 6, 2019.

Day 20.

This is my first month in prison,

and I'm keeping this journal as a part of rehab.

I'm just another prisoner,

and everything I own fits

into this 7 foot by 7 foot cubicle.

Lunch is at 10:00 in the morning,

and dinner at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Every meal seems to be served with rice and beans.

One wrong move here and they send you to the hole,

solitary confinement in the big house next door.

Lewisburg is a notorious prison.

Jimmy Hoffa and John Gotti did time here.

Ever since I was a kid,

my greatest fear was being sent to prison.

My dad once had me locked in a cell

in our local police station for a couple of minutes.

That was only a prank.

This is all too real.

From the outside looking in,

we had a very basic, typical, middle-class family.

I had an older brother

and a younger sister.

- My dad's name was Paul.

He was an orthopedic surgeon,

had a very small practice in Yonkers, New York.

My mother's name was Bobbi.

She used to be a registered nurse,

then became a real estate agent.

I was a good athlete

and I had my core group

of, you know, five or six buddies.

You know, we did what normal kids

in the '70s and '80s did.

Play outside as much as possible.

We'd play cards on Friday nights.

I got Intellivision.

It was a gaming console

which had blackjack and craps on it.

I turned that into a living room casino,

and that came to an end when a kid's father came

to our front door, knocked on it.

He goes, "With all due respect,

"if you just look in your backyard,

my son's bike is there."

"Why is your son's bike here?"

"He lost it to your son in a game of blackjack."

I mean, I was a middle schooler at that time.

Now, I know my parents love me,

but they just never said it.

I didn't think that my voice mattered,

so I was always fighting for approval,

and I grew up,

you know, very protective of my emotions.

I was also hiding from some childhood trauma,

demons I had mentally, emotionally,

and that goes back to something

I didn't tell anyone about.

Something I clearly built up bad coping habits

to get through it.

Living a life of secrets

and lying and protecting myself

really became my salvation

and my life preserver.

And I've been doing it ever since.

When I left home at 18 for college,

I got into Syracuse

and was enrolled there in the fall of 1987.

I majored in broadcast journalism.

Good evening and welcome to "Sports Look Tonight."

I'm Craig Carton, and tonight, we'll take a look

at how the Celtics are doing without Bird.

I got very little experience,

so I immersed myself in being on the radio,

and I fell in love with it.

Radio allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be.

It gave me an outlet to be opinionated,

to be boisterous, to be loud, to be confident,

all the things I really wasn't

in my interpersonal relationships,

so I basically was able to create

an on-air version of myself that I liked.

When you turned on a microphone

in front of my mouth, I could just do it,

and that's what I did.

- WGR with Craig Carton.

- Yeah!

The weekend is back.

Here on 3WE.

A little bit less than a half hour to go.

"Sportsline" and you till 7:00.

Craig Carton...

Sports radio, 610 WIP.

Well, a lot of stuff going on this morning.

It's a radio station in Denver.

You're on the air.

We're doing a search for Busch

and we're wondering if you have Busch.

Is this a joke? both: No.

- We're doing a search for Busch.

It's called a radio show.

I always viewed it as that. It's a show.

So I'm putting on a performance.

Doesn't get any weaker than that.

Lethargic. Pathetic.

I mean, if I had a thesaurus, I'd give you ten other words

to describe how the Cavs played yesterday.

I wanted to be the guy that had the balls to say

what most people are thinking without fear of retribution.

- He's shown in every market that he's been in

that he gets ratings, that he pushes buttons,

he creates headlines.

For an audience,

if they love him or they hate him,

they can't resist him.

- Is this a picture of your daughter?

This is not an attractive daughter.

I got an email one day

that the morning show at WNEW in New York,

they had just fired one of the hosts,

and they hired me off of two demo shows.

The "Sports Guys," WNEW, here in New York City.

I was now the morning man in the city I grew up in.

Sid Rosenberg was the cohost.

- We became very friendly very, very quickly,

and he was really okay being that second guy, right?

"I just got here. You've been here, Sid.

You're the host of the show. You're the guy."

- Hey, I got a new tagline for you.

"One sports guru, one sports idiot."

- Why would you refer to Sid as a sports idiot?

- No, it's not... Craig. It's not Sidney.

- Oh. - It's Craig.

Craig, come on.

You gotta get off the horse.

- He agreed to be that second wheel

until one Monday morning

when I saw Craig sitting in the host's chair.

He was the better talent.

He should've been in that chair.

But when you come up a month or two before

with your tail between your legs

and your balls basically in your mouth,

thankful to God you got this job,

you don't sit in the host's chair.

So needless to say, that Monday morning

was the very beginning

of what turned out to be many, many years

of a hateful relationship.

- In December of 2001, they said,

"Well, you're not being fired, but you're not being renewed."

So I walked into a last place show

and left... I'm pretty sure it was a last place show.

And in May of 2002,

I started doing the afternoon show

in New Jersey.

2:34, "Jersey Guys."

Craig Carton and Ray Rossi.

- He was one of the Jersey Guys

on New Jersey 101.5.

Craig was one of the afternoon drive guys,

and I was the United States Attorney at the time,

and that's how we first met and we became friends.

- I got in a lot of trouble publicly,

but I always viewed that as a good thing.

Instead of saying West Virginia,

you know what they put on the screen

on ESPN last night?

What? - West Virgina.

Very quickly became

the most listened to afternoon show in America.

- I had the best seat in the house.

I was sitting back ringside watching it all happen.

He got to pull back a lot of the curtain on things

because he wasn't afraid to expose you.

He wasn't afraid to call people out.

- The real question was gonna be,

would his outrageousness on-air,

would that prevent a bigger broadcaster

from being willing to take a chance on him?

- And I'm sitting there one day

and Don Imus utters the words, "nappy-headed hos."

Those words changed my life.

- Some rough girls from Rutgers.

Man, they got tattoos and...

That's some nappy-headed hos there,

I'm gonna tell you that now.

- Don Imus got suspended and then fired for what he said

about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

- "Imus in the Morning" had been a legendary show

and really had helped create what became WFAN,

the most important sports talk show station

in the country.

- The FAN, Sports Radio 66.

- When Imus was removed from the air,

it was a giant blow.

It was ratings,

but even more so, it was revenue.

- Everyone well-known Tom, Dick, and Harry wanted the job

'cause, you know,

it's the single best platform in radio.

- I tried Jim Cramer, I tried Lou Dobbs,

I tried Joe Scarborough, I tried the McEnroe brothers,

I teamed up Boomer Esiason with Monica Crowley.

Thought the show was a little too political.

I said, "I don't think that's the direction we wanna go."

- I got a phone call,

and they asked if I'd be interested

in doing the morning show at WFAN.

- Craig and I talked a lot about the really short leash

that his contract was putting him on,

and if he did anything

that they found to be objectionable, distasteful,

that they could terminate him immediately,

and I said to him, "I think that's the only contract

"you're gonna get to sign.

So I'd sign it if I were you and behave yourself."

- They wanted me to have a cohost,

and I said, "Who's the cohost gonna be?"

And they said, "New Yorkers love him.

"He was a quarterback, he's blond,

and he played in New York."

And I said, "Great. Phil Simms.

He'll be a great partner."

And they said, "No, this one didn't win the Super Bowl."

And I've always made the joke,

I was like, "Shit, it's Boomer?"

- Well, I mentioned it to Boomer,

and he didn't wanna have anything to do with Craig.

I said, "Boomer, he's really talented

"and, you know, it might be a good mix.

It's worth a shot."

- We met at the Brooklyn Diner.

Kay, we had never met before, and he said...

- "Let it rip and let's see what happens."

6:06 on The FAN.

Good morning and welcome to the first ever edition

of the "Boomer and Carton" show.

Boomer Esiason, Craig Carton.

Good morning, Boomer, buddy boy.

How are you today?

- I'm wide awake this morning, Craig.

It's good to see you. It's great to work with you.

- When they brought in "Boomer and Carton,"

they didn't know that they'd be able to replace Imus,

and they made it a number one hit.

- You know what's happening right now?

Every guy that listens to this show,

all 3.7 million of 'em, right?

- Boomer's sports knowledge was great,

and I knew Craig was an entertainer.

No one gave them a prayer,

but here, 3 1/2 years later,

they dominate the radio landscape

with booger jokes.

- He was able to articulate

just absolutely crazy opinions with a straight face.

- Dwarves.

That's my answer. - That's your answer.

- You bring out... You give every dwarf

in the tristate area...

- A free ticket. - A free ticket to the game.

- The only time that I even was concerned,

they would sometimes make what they call fart jokes.

That's right. I had gas.

- They don't need five minutes of gas noises.

- And the TV aspect of it,

by being on CBS Sports Network and also on MSG Network,

that just gave it a bigger feel.

- The thing I did very well

was create compelling content

where the listeners, even if they didn't like me,

didn't wanna miss what I was gonna say next.

- Oh, my God.

- I wanna make love to Mark Sanchez

while Rex Ryan tickles my feet.

- He was the crazy, zany radio guy

that had ludicrous ideas,

and then you had the common sense athlete

that would be like, "Look at this idiot."

- So I'm just gonna put 'em in. - Hey.

- Okay, now I want you to take

an M&M out of the cup and eat it.

- You know what, Gary Bettman right now...

- Loves me. - Is just absolutely sweating.

- Do you want me to eat it?

- He knew what he was doing.

He was the fire starter,

and I knew that I had to be the older brother,

I had to be the mature one,

I had to play off of him.

- I mean, we can't all, you know, tuck our shirts in

and pull our jeans up to our nipples, Boomer.

I mean, some of us actually like to be casual and relaxed.

- Although Boomer was the true quarterback,

Craig was the radio quarterback.

- I have a lot to say today. I just started.

I wanted to get to you quickly. - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you had a lot to say last week too.

- Yeah, I did.

- You have to be thought-provoking

and entertaining and nasty and nice.

You have to evoke emotion.

Just so... I gotta tell you, the Yankees are great.

- And you can't teach it.

Craig's got it.

- Right, so zip your lip.

I mean, you decided to get a job in TV,

and you ain't that attractive.

- There's almost something Trumpian

about his nose for what will work on TV,

what will work for a crowd.

Bang! - One more.

Bam! Bam!

- One more, one more, one more. - Nice!

- He clearly had this great knack

for radio performance.

- We will play the audio

of the foot fetish video for you...

- Why? - At 7:10 this morning.

- Why? - 'Cause it's what we do.

What made "Boomer and Carton" special was

the thing that came most natural to us,

and that was our on-air relationship.

- Went out and framed your article

that was in "The New York Times."

- That's a nice frame you did there.

"What were you doing when I was playing

"in the Super Bowl, Craig?

You were inside, probably playing Intellivision."

- As goofy as you are on the radio

is as good a dad as you are at home.

- Well, thanks. - You are a tremendous father.

- It got better and better from year to year.

The closer they became, the better the show became.

J! E! T! S!

Jets! Jets! Jets!

- He made Boomer laugh a lot more.

Boomer would sometimes sit there

with his arms folded like this

just listening to what Craig had to say

and belly laughing.

- Your name is Punto!

Boomer's wearing the Pajamagram hoodie footies

and really getting into it.

Let me see what you got here.

Oh, yes. -

- I've seen guys that are famous

from something other than radio come into radio

and they don't really like you busting their balls.

- I have procured...

- Boomer was okay being made fun of.

- That's a handsome guy right there.

- The oil painting of Boomer Esiason

that he does keep in his home.

How 'bout that?

My greatest gift to him was humanizing him.

I made Boomer Esiason a real person

with a family and a dog,

put his pants on the way we put our pants on.

And the greatest gift he gave me was,

he bought into my vision

of what would make the show successful.

It's surreal that I'm the guy on the morning drive show

that Imus held for all those years successfully,

and we get to do that every single day.

They overpay me, unless they're here,

and then you underpay me greatly.

I wanted to prove everybody wrong

that said I wasn't good enough

to be major market successful.

You know, the vindictiveness of proving people wrong,

to this day, is very important to me.

It's a driving force of my life.

Day 68.

One guy here says he's a member of the mafia.

He tries to talk tough and use Italian phrases.

One guy here really is mafia

and made a call to check him out.

Turns out the guy is full of shit.

So he's been given the unforgettable nickname

Phony Soprano.

Not long ago, I arranged a huge charity softball game

at Yankee Stadium.

- Carton might try to go all the way.

- Come on home! - Let's see.

- Now, I've been drafted by the Yankees

in the prison softball league.

There's trash talk, and guys get into beefs.

It's all pride and ego.

So I say nothing.

I feel like life's passing me by

while I sit here.

I wanna scream and explode.

Every day feels like a marathon.

My days used to be my shows and planning new ventures.

Now it's walking 3 miles,

reading, and learning to crochet.

Real men crochet.

Or that's what I keep telling myself.

- Now let me ask you this question:

how are we doing the picks?

Straight up, right? These are straight picks?

- Against the spread.

- They are against the spread?

- It's gotta be against the spread.

- No, I don't think it does.

- How do you make picks not with a spread?

I mean, what am I, 5 years old?

- Just like we do it on the NFL today.

- I think the Cowboys are gonna win.

- Oh, you're an idiot.

You really are. - I mean, come on, dude.

- Gambling was a big part of the show.

- The Green Bay Packers will beat the Chicago Bears,

and I also love the under.

- Talking about the games

and, you know, who to bet here or there.

- You can have your 2 grand back

and I'll double it and give you 2,000 more.

Gambling has always been, you know, a part of my life.

- I always had an affinity for gambling.

I enjoyed it. I liked it.

The action, the energy in the room.

I was a good card player as a kid,

but later on in life,

the majority of my gambling was sports-related.

My biggest wager was probably a thousand bucks,

and it was many years later

that I really started playing blackjack.

- Craig's infatuation with gambling was never

a secret to me.

Even when we were at 101.5 with the Jersey Guys,

we would be in Atlantic City.

The tables were $10 a hand up to $200 a hand,

and even at that time, he was a social butterfly,

spinning around, going from table to table,

having a good time, gambling.

- About 2013, '14,

I'm now playing more blackjack.

I thought that if I treated it

with the discipline of a stockbroker

and thought of it as a job

that I could actually be very lucrative doing it.

- He could play one, two,

sometimes three hands at one time

and never skipped a beat.

I've played blackjack. I love playing blackjack.

I have trouble with my one hand.

- I had been around him a couple times

where he won a lot of money.

I would start to think to myself,

"He has this figured out. Why can't I figure this out?

This seems like great additional income."

- When it came to gambling, I thought I was the best at it

and I didn't think any casino could beat me.

The cockiness that I'm really good at it,

I'm gonna win,

that plays into your ego.

So there's an arrogance to it...

There was for me, at least...

Where, you know, I always compared it

to Tiger Woods on a golf course,

Michael Jordan on a basketball court.

When they stepped on the court and the golf course,

nothing else mattered.

So when I sat down at a table to play blackjack,

nothing else mattered.

- I'm not really a gambler,

but Craig and I sat down at a blackjack table,

and after about 20 hands,

I had won $3,500.

And I said, "I'm done. I'm leaving.

I got my 3,500. I'm good."

You know, everybody said, "No, you gotta stay.

You gotta stay." I'm like, "No, I'm leaving."

And really, when you think about the difference

between me and Craig when it comes to gambling,

there it is right there.

I left, he stayed,

and then later on came the bet for the Borgata

because I guess he felt like,

you know, he had to prove something to me.

- We were doing a show

at the Borgata in Atlantic City.

We would go down there once a year,

do a broadcast from down there.

- In a strange way, it kinda happened overnight.

An infamous event called the Boomer Bet.

- If you show me how to win some money.

- Here's what I would do for you at Borgata.

You just have to take the leap of faith.

- He was on such a roll and so cocky and confident

with his blackjack winning,

Craig brought up on the air

that he would double Boomer's money.

- Talking about what a great gambler he was

and that he could take $10,000 of my money

and double it and all this other...

I said, "Oh, really? You could double my money?

You could double my money?"

And I just kept, you know, pushing him

and pushing him and pushing him,

and he kept saying, "Yeah, I could double your money.

I could double your money."

How 'bout if I give you 10 grand?

- If you gave me 10 grand? - Yeah.

- I'd guarantee you 25,000.

- Guarantee me... I'm in.

- To guarantee a win is just stupid,

but I said it on the air and he called me on it.

Boomer came into the studio with $10,000 in cash

and counted out every single $100 bill.

- I gave him 10 grand.

It was crazy radio.

You had gambling and the Borgata

and money and cash.

- We talk it up and talk it up

for the weeks leading up to this Borgata remote.

- I remember listeners calling up

and saying, you know, "You're full of baloney.

You're not doing that. That's not real money."

- Alan and I were, like, trying

to do the math in our heads,

saying, like, "How is this gonna work?"

- That night, I won about $80,000

playing blackjack.

"Boomer and Carton" live at the Borgata.

We're inside the B Bar.

At 11:00 this morning,

it's the first ever "Boomer and Carton" deep stack

Texas Hold'em tournament.

Normally, when we did our show at the Borgata,

a hundred people came

to watch us do the show Friday morning.

That Friday morning,

there might have been a thousand people there.

- Craig has a sack of cash.

He takes it, puts it down on the desk,

and presented to Boomer,

and there was much rejoicing.

- So I gave him the 25 grand. The place goes crazy.

- And that bet was the coolest thing

and, as it's turned out,

probably the worst thing that's ever happened.

- The real problem with the Boomer Bet

is that I won.

As a result of that win,

I'm now, you know, the blackjack whisperer.

- I would get calls from callers,

"Hey, let me give Craig 10 grand."

You know, I'd hang up on 'em.

I never would put anybody through,

'cause that seemed silly to me.

Well, he's not gonna take some random dude's $10,000

and promise to double it.

That didn't make sense.

- So I started to get approached

by a number of these types of people

who heard the bet, knew that I had paid it off,

and then wanted to know

if I wanted to be in business with them.

"Hey, Craig, I'll give you 100,000 bucks.

Give me 110,000 back next month."

- That's where the craziness began,

and I guess it just got worse and worse and worse for him.

- Once people started giving me money to gamble

on a regular basis, and significant sums of money,

then I was all in.

There were four different individuals,

two of whom I've never met to this day,

who extended me loans upwards of a million dollars.

There were times when I met a buddy

on a street corner in New York City

and he would hand me a knapsack,

and inside that knapsack was a million dollars cash.

Blackjack became a drug for me.

- A blackjack player is like somebody doing cocaine.

You have to keep taking cocaine to maintain that rush,

and blackjack is extremely similar.

- Everyone knew that I gambled.

They all knew I liked to gamble.

Nobody knew the amounts I was gambling.

There was one time I won $325,000

in, like, nine minutes.

Two hands, $15,000 per hand,

so 30,000 bucks every deal.

I won 325 grand

and walked out the door to go to work.

When I decided I wanted to gamble,

I would reach out to one of the investors.

I would then wire that money to the casino.

It's called front money.

Most of the time, I was there after I worked,

and I would go there right after a show.

- If you really think about it,

what normal person, at 12:00 noon,

decides to drive 2 1/2 hours

to go play blackjack for an hour

to drive back 2 1/2 hours?

I mean, think about that.

Five hours of driving to play blackjack for an hour?

Who the... why?

- When I was gambling late at night, nobody knew.

I didn't tell anybody.

I would leave my apartment at midnight,

everyone was sleeping, and I was gone.

I got on a helicopter in New York City

and flew to Atlantic City.

I had a $600,000 wire

that was sent on my behalf,

and I wagered from about 1:00 in the morning

to 3:30.

3:30 was always the cutoff time

for me to be able to get back on a helicopter

and fly back to the city

to make it to the Tribeca Radio Studios,

where WFAN was.

Good morning, everybody!

6:03, Boomer Esiason, Craig Carton,

on The FAN.

I didn't realize that I was an addict at the time.

I really loved playing,

and I convinced myself

you know, as long as I'm doing a good radio show

and we're number one and they don't know about it,

well, I'll just continue to do it.

I will give the Jets credit for this.

We'll start Jets, I guess, okay?

- All right. - Jets are down three...

Gambling aside, I always got involved

in other types of businesses.

- Craig was one of those guys that always had an idea.

He always had, you know, the next big thing.

- I have a cologne deal.

- You have a cologne deal. - I have a cologne deal.

- That's what I wanna do. I wanna smell like Craigy.

What's the name of it gonna be called?

Fart?

- He felt he was a businessman.

Like, he thought he was a real businessman,

not just a radio personality.

- There were a million of these little side projects.

- I did come up with another genius idea this weekend.

Junk Balm.

- Which is, like, deodorant

for your nether regions, I guess.

- Al and I always thought, "Just do the show.

Why do you have to do all this other stuff?"

- You know, he was sort of a serial entrepreneur.

He had this sort of restless spirit.

He obviously wanted to do more than just talk on the radio.

- I think Craig wanted to see himself

as a, you know, $20 million a year entertainer,

where he wanted to live

in the penthouse in New York City,

where he wanted his kids to go to private school

and he wanted to make sure that he could drive

around New York City with a driver.

At the end of the day, he was always striving,

you know, for the next thing, the next big thing.

- If I was just content being successful

and number one on the radio,

well, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

In May of 2016,

I started a company called Tier One Tickets

to resell tickets to concert events

on the secondary market.

- Talent on the radio doesn't equal talent

in business,

and I think he had a hard time understanding that.

- I will always remember saying to him,

"Just keep it real, man. Always keep it real.

"Don't get involved with the wrong people.

You gotta keep it real."

- He surrounded himself with some real beauties.

Joe Meli, if he was a conman, he was a brilliant conman.

Craig said, you know,

"He's the smartest person I've ever met."

He was, you know, the smartest person

in every room we were ever in.

I think he was seduced and besotted by Meli.

- Everybody in that ticket reselling business

seemed scummy to me.

- As we started to acquire more tickets

and sell more tickets,

I reached out to a hedge fund

to loan me money personally

so that I could buy even more tickets.

The hedge fund gave me $2 million

specifically to invest in the purchase of tickets.

I took $950,000 of it

and used it for gambling purposes.

That was the single biggest mistake

I've made in my entire life.

It's at 2 1/2 right now.

The "Boomer and Carton" program does not condone

illegal gambling.

Bet it today before it gets to 3.

You don't wanna start buying points.

- All of us would hear him talk about it

both on the air and off the air

about what a central part of his life gambling,

blackjack in particular, was becoming.

- I think he was in Bimini,

and he told me he had won $2 million.

I said, "You're paying taxes on that, right?"

And he goes, "Yeah, I gotta pay taxes."

I said, "Fine.

"Put half of that money away for your kids

"and their education.

Don't do anything stupid with it."

I'll never forget that conversation.

And then after that,

that's the last I heard of it.

You know, and I had no idea how much he was gambling.

I had no idea where he got the money from.

I had no idea that anybody was contacting him.

- I knew Craig liked to gamble

'cause he talked about it on the air.

He wrote about it in his book.

But that doesn't mean you know

that somebody's gambling millions of dollars.

- I don't think there was one person at that station

that had any idea how bad it was.

- You know, how stupid were we to not really see

that this guy was sort of falling apart?

- I got to a level

where I'm now wagering $125,000

on the table to start.

I was winning and losing obscene amounts of money,

and it didn't bother me.

I just wanted to play more.

The worst trip was, an investor gave $1/2 million.

He expected a 10% return.

Everything beyond that, I keep.

I was there to gamble,

so I did it as much as I could.

I fell asleep at the table in the middle of a hand,

and I remember waking up.

I popped up and I said, "Hit,"

and I won a $20,000 hand.

In the first 12 hours, I had his 550

plus 1.5 million.

- There are so many incidences

where even a casino employee says, "You're winning.

Go home."

- And you walk out the door

with 1 1/2 million in profit

that I'm keeping.

I walked out with nothing.

I lost the 1 1/2 million I had won

and I lost the 500,000 he had given me.

So I essentially lost $2 million

in a 24 hour period.

So I took a personal loan

to pay back the blackjack investor,

and that's when I really started getting in trouble.

'Cause now you're borrowing from other people

to cover debts,

and when you start going down that slope,

that only ends one way,

and it's not good.

- We have this idea that gambling is about thrill

and risk and uncertainty,

'cause certainly you are

technically risking money, right?

But when you're actually in the zone of gambling,

it doesn't feel that way.

- There was no emotion to winning.

There's no emotion to losing.

Blackjack became an escape.

- They say, "Everything in my life felt

"so uncertain.

"The one place that I was certain about anything

"or that I could calm down or get away from my anxieties

was when I was gambling."

- Gambling allowed me to escape,

you know, the "demons."

I felt like I was kinda in this protective bubble

when I played.

- Solitude is very important.

Gamblers used to tell me,

"I liked to go into the corners

"where I could hide.

I felt safe."

He was gambling at a high enough level

where the casino would cater to his wish

to really be alone.

- I was not looking for attention.

I was looking to hide.

And every casino in the world would allow me to gamble alone

in great privacy.

- The thing is that they care more

about staying in the flow of action,

staying in that continuous zone,

than they do about winning.

- It was the only thing I found in my life

that matched the speed of my brain,

the speed of the cards coming out.

I used to have multiple tables reserved,

and I used to make sure that they shuffled

before I sat down.

I couldn't wait the five minutes

for the dealer to shuffle.

I hated it.

It felt like an eternity to me.

- When somebody has a sickness

and somebody is wrapped up in something

that you're not really that aware of

and you can't get out in front of it

and help that person stop,

there's a level of guilt that you have as well.

- I was as much of an enabler

as anybody was.

There was a moment when his wife had asked me

to stop going with him,

and I just remember looking in her eyes

and realizing, "All right, you know what?

I got it. I understand."

- I know Boomer was concerned about it.

Al Dukes was concerned about it.

I know there were others who were concerned

about it as well.

I talked to him a couple of times about it.

"Hey, do we have a problem here?"

You know, "Do you think

you should be talking to somebody?"

And he perpetually denied it was ever a problem.

- Hiding the gambling was so easy for me.

But then you start lying about everything.

- With gambling, there's no saturation point.

Like, you could only do so much drugs

before you're gonna pass out or die,

whereas with gambling, it's virtually unlimited,

so you could imagine the high.

Eventually, everybody runs out of money,

and then, like a house of cards,

it all collapses.

- Day 210.

I used to make millions.

Now, I get 5 bucks a month as a prison tutor.

But the real currency here

is stamps and packets of mackerel,

things other prisoners want.

I bought some basics to make my own prison meals.

My best is Ramen a la Carton y Pollo.

It's chicken breast and turkey log

with ramen noodles.

Now, you gotta make sure to shake the chicken

in an empty Dorito bag for extra flavor.

Visiting day is the best and the worst day of the week.

I live for the visits of family and friends,

but it's tough when they go.

Being here makes the decisions and risks I took

so unfathomably stupid.

Why wasn't being number one on the radio good enough?

Why wasn't my family more important

than my selfish desires?

I'm trying to understand what I was chasing

and why that chase was so important.

I had every single thing you could ever want in life.

I made a lot of money,

I had a beautiful family, great apartment,

but I was clearly living, you know, kinda two lives.

One, the affable, outgoing radio talk show host

who had achieved everything he ever wanted in life,

but at the same time,

I had these personal demons chasing me.

And that goes back

to, you know, the unfortunate reality

of being molested as a child at a summer camp.

I was abused every night for eight weeks,

something I withheld

for more than 30 years of my life.

I still had shame over it.

You know, it still haunted me and bothered me.

I was never living a full life emotionally,

'cause I had this secret which gnawed at me.

I wish I had been strong enough much earlier in my life

to tell people.

You know, I wasn't able to do that.

The first time I wanted to put it out

was when I wrote my book, "Loudmouth,"

and I wrote a chapter on it.

Simon & Schuster actually made the decision

that I shouldn't put it in the book

because the rest of the book is

hijinks and laughter and fun stuff.

So I regrettably took it out of the book.

I still read it now and then.

So you want me to just read it, or...

- Yeah.

"And I never cried again

and haven't cried once since that night."

- Sexual abuse is obviously something

that he hid deep inside himself.

And I don't know who knew, but I could tell you I didn't.

He never talked to me about it.

- He never, ever shared

the most intimate details

of that part of his life when he was a child.

- I found that out just this year.

- Obviously, Sandusky's the bad guy here.

He's, you know, the Big Bad Wolf,

but the reality is that Joe Paterno is the godfather

of everything in Penn State.

The worst moment for me in not coming forward was

being on the radio

during the whole Jerry Sandusky situation at Penn State.

This is a predator, a hunter, of young boys

who did the most despicable thing

you could ever do to a child,

and the guy that was in charge of everything at Penn State

allowed it to go on

without thinking twice about it.

- I had never seen him

react to something so viciously.

- Here's a man that was told

that a 10-year-old boy was being sodomized

in his backyard

and did nothing about it.

- And I now think

that all the things that he has been through,

the way that he is,

obviously stems from some of the things

that happened while he was in camp.

- From the minute I decided not to share

being molested at summer camp,

I became good at lying.

Because your...

all your emotions are now lies.

'Cause you're protecting how you really feel.

You build up these defense mechanisms,

really, as a way just to get through life.

Ultimately, I transferred that

into lying about gambling,

and they're very much connected.

- When you have trauma issues that are unresolved

and you're having these big wins,

it makes you really forget about that trauma.

Gambling is one of the perfect drugs.

It almost always works.

- Which number will be higher?

Rangers' shots on goal tomorrow night

or Carmelo Anthony points tonight?

- Rangers' shots on goal. - I will take Carmelo.

We got a hundy on that though. We shook like men.

You wanna pinky swear like men too?

- I'm not gonna pinky swear anything.

- Well, I'm just saying. - I shook your hand.

- It made sense to me at the time,

but the very first loan I took to gamble with,

it's immediately wrong and out of control.

If you lose their money,

you have to pay them back out of your money

with interest.

If you add up all the loans over a couple of years,

I borrowed over $30 million to gamble with.

In 2017,

I was the net loser of a couple million dollars.

I had to cover the losses personally.

- The amazing thing about Craig

and one of the reasons we were all sort of blindsided

is that when the light came on, he was ready to go

and still performing at his best.

- Now I'm sure, guy,

your intellect is probably illiterate,

so I read the newspaper for you.

- He was the mailman. That guy delivered.

No matter what was going on around him,

he could block it out and just zoom in on that camera

and capture that audience.

- What do you have a thing for?

- Lasagna. - Okay.

- Yes. - Good. Nice.

- And I will admit,

hot chicks in nothing at all but football jerseys

and me pouring barbecue sauce all over them

and working them like a rib.

But that's me, Boomer. That's my fetish.

- It is absolutely shocking to me

that he was able to come in and do radio shows.

I can't imagine the stress he was under.

- All hail the king!

- Even though you knew there had to be bad,

you never saw it.

He was a master of disguise in that manner.

- Part of the appeal of Craig and the tragic nature of Craig

is that, you know, he manages to screw things up for himself

even when things are going really well.

Self-sabotage, it's like it's part of his arsenal.

- There was one time that he had called me

to meet at the Greek downtown.

He started rambling on about this pitch

and, you know, tickets, and, you know, investment

and this business that made no sense whatsoever to me,

and at that moment,

I said to myself, "Hmm.

"Something bad is going on here.

He's in trouble."

- And then a guy that I've partnered with

in a ticket business gets arrested by the FBI.

- We investigated Joe Meli for some illegal activity

around secondary market sales of tickets,

and in the course of that investigation,

we saw some communications and some financial transactions

that he had with Craig Carton,

and so as we began to look into Mr. Meli,

we started to look into Mr. Carton's activity

as well.

- The FBI picked up Joe Meli,

and once Craig got wind of the story,

he started to talk to me more and more about,

"I can't believe this is happening.

"How come nobody told me this guy was no good?

I can't believe I'm wrapped up in this."

- Ultimately, what Craig did was

defraud a hedge fund of money that they invested

in what they thought was legitimate business.

- What he actually used the funds for was to pay off

old investors in some of these other similar schemes

and to repay debts, particularly gambling debts.

- The one thing I'm guilty of

is misappropriating the hedge fund's money.

I spent their money

five weeks before the money should've been spent.

Now, I still bought everything they expected me to buy,

but still, the timing of when I did it

is illegal.

- You can't take money for one purpose

and use it for another in business.

- It's mentally draining to live life,

and then live a secret life

and to mentally process all the lies you've told.

Clearly, the amount of crap

going on inside my head was overwhelming.

I've got my gambling crap over here,

I've got my work responsibilities here,

I've got my family responsibilities here,

and now I'm juggling,

and I'm juggling on a high wire.

Because now I'm worried, "They arrested this guy.

"They're gonna come talk to me at some point.

We did business together."

I was mentally drained.

My wife and I went to Whistler, British Columbia,

for just an adult vacation.

So I get on the lift

and I took it to the top of the mountain

and I'm kinda admiring the scenery on the way up.

It's a beautiful place.

I eat lunch, I have a couple drinks,

and after about an hour or so,

I decide it's time to go back down.

I'm gonna meet my wife.

So I get on the lift chair by myself,

and as I'm going down,

I now have a desire to jump...

off the lift chair, down to the mountain.

I lifted the bar up

and I'm now inching closer to the edge of the seat.

And I got very upset.

I started crying,

and I had this...

out loud conversation with myself.

And I'm tell... "Don't do it. Don't do it.

You're better than this. You're not jumping."

And as I'm telling myself not to do it,

I'm inching closer and closer to the edge of the seat,

'cause I'm going.

There's no doubt in my mind,

I'm jumping off this chairlift.

It's just a matter of when.

Fortunately, I had my phone with me.

And I just called the first person whose name I saw

that I knew was a friend.

- I'm just going about my day.

I get a phone call from Craig.

I didn't understand, really, what he was saying.

He was outta control, inconsolable.

He was truly in a desperate situation.

- And I said, "I need you to just talk to me.

"I'm gonna hurt myself.

I'm about to jump off a chairlift."

And I'm crying.

- Really, it was only maybe five seconds

before I went from him kidding to "This is actually real."

- He talked.

He talked to me for however long it was.

- So all I could say

at that point was, "I love you."

"Listen, I love you.

"You're gonna make it to the bottom.

"You're gonna get to the bottom of this thing.

You're not gonna jump."

And slowly but surely, the yelling stopped

and the breathing started to slow down.

I just kinda coaxed him down for the last few bits.

And the crazy part about it is,

just as he gets off of the ski lift...

- I said, "Go eff yourself.

I'll talk to you about this later."

- Click, and just hangs up,

and I was like, "Oh, uh, that's it."

He needed me, I was there,

and then on to the next.

- Thankfully, I haven't felt that way since.

But I absolutely was gonna jump.

There was no doubt about it.

The morning of September 6, 2017,

that was our first night ever

living in this new apartment we had moved into.

I got up at 3:00 in the morning.

I called Uber to take me to work.

I walked out of the apartment.

There was a woman coming up the stairs,

and she immediately said, "Are you Craig Carton?"

"Yes, I am."

"FBI. You're under arrest."

That was my "day of reckoning."

I was immediately cuffed.

Then they brought me to the park bench

and told me to call my wife.

I woke her up.

You know, probably the worst phone call

I ever had to make.

And when she came down, she had this terrible look

of, you know, sadness on her face and bewilderment.

It's still dark outside,

and I'm sitting there handcuffed to a park bench

surrounded by FBI agents.

- I drive in with Jerry Recco on a lot of days.

We had just parked the car, and my phone rings.

It was Craig's wife, Kim.

- And I remember him looking at it,

looking at me, and saying, "This isn't good."

- Kim said, "Al, Craig will not be in today."

I said, "Okay."

I said, "Is everything okay?"

She said, "No, but I can't talk to you right now about it."

- "Something's going on, Craig's not coming in,

so you have to host."

That was it.

"Okay. That's fine.

"Maybe they had an argument.

Maybe one of the kids was sick."

Never thought anything of it other than, "Ugh,

now I gotta go in there for four hours,"

really unprepared.

- It's only a little bit after 4:00 in the morning now,

so there's no traffic,

there's no hustle and bustle yet of New York.

- There were two young agents.

One of them made a point of telling me

how big a fan he was of mine,

and this was kind of a surreal moment for him.

- He was, you know, shocked a little bit at first,

but he was, you know, very calm

and he was actually very respectful as well.

He did say to the agents at one point,

"I just want you guys to know that I respect you

and I respect what you do."

- They drove me to Federal Plaza,

and there was a guard in the guard tower,

and it was the first time I ever heard myself

being referred to as a criminal.

They were very nonchalant.

"Hey, we got one criminal in the back."

- All righty. Here we are.

Al Dukes comes to me and says, "Kim just called.

Craig's not coming in today."

- As the morning show was getting close to 6:00,

Craig wasn't there.

He had appeared to be under the weather

for a few days before and sluggish.

- He was a little edgy the day before.

He was actually even, I believe, sleeping

in between, you know, some of our commercial breaks.

I figured there was something wrong,

but I had no idea what it was.

- WFAN-FM, New York.

It's "Boomer and Carton" on The FAN.

- September 6, 2017, was my 55th birthday.

And I flipped on "Boomer and Carton"

and only saw Boomer.

- I remember opening the show as,

"Numb Nuts is not here today."

If you hear me starting the show,

that means Numb Nuts is under the weather.

And he's not here.

- And it was pretty clear to me

that they didn't know why Craig wasn't there.

- They brought me into a very small office room

and then cuffed me to something

on the side of the wall,

and I was sitting at a table basically

for the next four hours.

- We don't handle celebrities or people of any notability

any different than anyone else we arrest.

If you're being arrested by the FBI,

you're being arrested by the FBI

because you committed a federal crime.

He definitely was not

the Craig Carton you heard on the radio though.

He didn't have

that brash personality that day.

- They brought me, like, a snack bar or something to eat

and a soda,

and then press release went out.

- And it was probably in the 7:00 hour

when I started to see

the alerts come across on Twitter

that Craig had been arrested.

Most of us thought it was something...

smoking pot, maybe a DUI.

- It was about an hour later that it comes out

that he was arrested by the FBI.

Boom.

- "Boomer and Carton" cohost Craig Carton was arrested

at his home on federal charges

related to white-collar crime early this morning.

It's unclear what those charges are.

- I called Al Dukes

and I said, "Al, what is going on?"

And he said, "The FBI arrested him."

And I said, "For what?"

And he said, "I have no idea."

- All right, it's 7:36 on The FAN.

"Boomer and Carton" in the morning.

Jerry Recco sitting in the power chair this morning

for Craigy.

- I was stunned,

and you start to think, like,

"What has he gotten himself into?"

Mark Chernoff, our program director,

comes running into the studio and says, "Don't say anything!

Don't say anything!"

And I'm like, "Don't say anything?

"I mean, we're a talk show,

"and the talk show host that is not here

"is arrested by the FBI, for Christ's sake.

What am I supposed to say?"

- All right, top of the hour, 9:00.

"Boomer and Carton" on The FAN.

I am sitting in for Craig

and Boomer will be back in just a moment.

We got a lot going on.

- Radio's an interesting thing

in that it doesn't stop for anything.

You kinda have to roll with the changes.

- And I gotta look in the camera

and I gotta say, "Well...

"now I know why my partner's not here this morning.

He's been arrested by the FBI."

I am aware, now, why Craig is not here this morning.

Unfortunately, he was arrested this morning.

Over here at the station, they're aware of it as well.

They're cooperating with authorities.

I'm taken aback and surprised by it,

just like I'm sure everybody else is.

I have no other information. There's nothing else I can say.

I thought he called in sick this morning,

but unfortunately, my partner was arrested,

so I guess there'll be more news to come, I'm sure,

from somewhere.

"But at this moment, I'm as shocked

as everybody else."

Because I was.

And not only shocked.

I was angry.

I was brokenhearted over the whole thing.

- And then it all started clicking into place

that he was doing the old shell game,

just pay off the gambling debts.

- The formal charges that were brought

were securities fraud, wire fraud,

and then conspiracy to commit those offenses.

Basically, that just means he lied to people

to solicit funds from them and did that with other people.

- Shortly after that, I was in front of a judge.

It's surreal.

Like, this can't possibly be happening.

You know, the courtroom was packed,

and it's all media.

The judge made a wisecrack about,

"Apparently, there's a lot of sports fans

here in the building today."

I remember seeing my wife, my brother.

That was very upsetting to me,

to see people I loved and cared for

who are there looking at me,

you know, as a potential criminal.

- All right, it's 9:59 on The FAN.

"Boomer and Carton" here.

This is me signing off for today,

and it's been a very interesting day

around here at WFAN for sure.

- I spoke to Boomer after the show was over.

He said to me, "I think he's got real trouble here."

- I knew we were popular,

but when I walked out of that courtroom,

I mean, I've never experienced anything like that in my life.

I mean, it was like "Lord of the Flies"

amongst the media to get in my face

with a camera or a microphone.

You know, personal space meant nothing.

- When you see the video footage of him

coming from the courthouse,

I mean, jaw-dropping doesn't even begin to... I was stunned.

- I was hoping it was some kind of mistake.

But it's highly unlikely

that federal prosecutors are gonna drop these charges.

Especially with a big public figure,

you usually shoot to kill.

You don't shoot to wound.

And you usually don't miss the shot.

- I knew right away that I was screwed job-wise.

There was no doubt in my mind.

- That was the moment that that show was over.

- I wanna say thank you to all of our listeners

that reached out to me yesterday.

As you can imagine, my phone blew up

as everybody was finding out what was going on.

- For ten years, we were one

of the most listened to sports talk radio shows in America.

And for those ten years,

we never had a single argument.

Never had a single fight.

We were kinda brothers in arms.

- I just want people to know out there

that I loved my partner for ten years.

I still love my partner.

We tried to have a conversation here or there

and, you know, it never went well

because he didn't wanna understand,

I don't think he wanted to understand,

that, you know, I have other people in my life

that are like, "Get the hell away from that guy.

He got arrested by the FBI."

- When you get arrested, you don't tell the FBI,

"Give me a minute. I gotta call 30 people."

So unfortunately, he found out

the way the rest of the world found out.

He either texted or emailed me back

that he needed a few days before he could call me.

- It took me a while.

It took me a while.

And the reason it took me a while was because

I felt like I didn't wanna know, you know?

I just... I don't wanna know all the seedy details.

I didn't wanna get myself embroiled

in what he had to do to defend himself.

They told me to read this.

"My cohost Craig Carton has been suspended from this show

until further notice."

I remember him sending me a pretty negative email.

When I read the email, it made me puke, actually,

it was just so pathetic, but...

And I remember that I was very angry

when I got the email because...

You know, he talked about something

that we often talked about

when once of us would be in trouble.

You know, "We're foxhole guys."

That was something that we would always say.

"I got your back. I got your back.

You got my back."

And I always would tell him, like, "I'll be in your foxhole

"as long as you don't bring a hand grenade

in the foxhole with you."

I was very angry at that,

and that even pushed me

further away from him initially.

- So he's mad at me that I ruined

what we had created.

He can be mad at me for that. He should be.

But I didn't do it on purpose.

I didn't set out to ruin, you know, "Boomer and Carton."

- He told me, "Nothing to this.

"It's a bunch of mistakes.

"They're gonna get to the bottom of it

"and then they're gonna just,

you know, drop any charges against him."

- And I pleaded not guilty to the charges against me.

I did that for one reason:

because I am unequivocally not guilty

of what I'm being charged with.

- He took loans

and did not immediately purchase tickets

with those moneys,

but treated those moneys as if they were fungible

and purchased tickets at a later date.

- If you are soliciting investments from people

and you do something other than what you say

you're going to do with the money,

that is fraud.

- Radio host Craig Carton.

This afternoon, a jury convicted him.

Carton was accused of swindling investors

in a ticket reselling business.

- When it finally came to fruition

that he was found guilty and there was no defense,

he realized that was the end of it

and that was the reality of it.

- On the day of sentencing, Carton was subdued.

You know, this is kinda the walk of shame here.

I think he was wearing a jacket and even a tie.

I had never seen him do that before.

He was like a chastised kid.

He got up and addressed the court

and delivered, you know,

an emotional, soul-baring account

of his gambling addiction, of his sexual abuse,

of his regret.

His family was there.

You know, it was hard to see the family.

- Judge McMahon sentenced Craig to 3 1/2 years,

and he has to pay restitution

back to the victims in his criminal case.

- The feeling you have when you look

at Craig Carton's situation is sadness,

because there are no winners.

There's nothing good that came

of the trouble he got himself in.

There was only losers.

- You look at the talent,

the friendships, the lies,

and you just say to yourself, "Why?

Why?"

- All of a sudden, it's like, "Wow, that ten years is gone."

You know, as fast as it happened,

that's how quick it ended.

- Day 371.

In prison jargon, I have two sleeps and a wake

before I leave this place.

For the first month, my wife and family wrote me

every single day.

I saved every one of those letters.

They mean the world to me.

I've been away from them for a year.

I'm going to work hard

to rebuild my relationship with them

and everyone else in my life.

I'm excited and nervous.

Excited to leave this place behind,

but nervous because I have no idea what's waiting for me

beyond the gates.

I'm 51.

I had it all

and I lost it all,

and now I've gotta start all over again.

- I see a number pop up on my screen

and I hear a very familiar voice saying,

"Hey, it's me. I'm out."

And it was Craigy.

He's paid his debt to society.

He did not get out because of coronavirus.

He got out because of all the things

he was doing in prison

to get early release.

What I heard was a happy and relieved Craig Carton.

He was with his family yesterday.

They all went to pick him up at the penitentiary

and they brought him home,

and now the real work begins for him,

and that's rebuilding his life.

- There was a point where I thought

this day was never gonna come.

Greatest moment I had in over a year.

Just seeing my wife, seeing my four kids,

seeing the smiles on their faces

and the tears of joy

that their dad and husband finally got out of prison.

And now it's just about enjoying

all the little things.

Looking up in the sky, seeing the sun, clouds,

hearing birds chirp,

being able to walk down the street,

being able to work, being able to spend time with my family,

and just having my freedom back,

which is something, for sure, I took for granted.

Boomer was the very first person I called,

and I probably got to him about 27 minutes after

I actually walked out of prison.

It was important that he be the first person I called.

My relationship with him, it's had its ups and downs,

but all the downs were inflicted by my actions.

So I'm really happy to say

that Boomer and I are in a very good place now.

Closer than we've been in a long time.

He was mad at me,

and he had every right to be mad at me,

and the other guys on the show,

they had every right to be angry with me too.

I would love to just look in that camera

and one day look them all in the eye and just say

I'm sorry for being selfish

and into my own shit way too much

and not taking account of, you know, their wellbeing.

And I also have to be upfront with who I am,

and I have to do that 24/7.

That can never take a day off.

The pledge I made to the people

who did stay with me through prison

is that I'll do that.

They deserve me to be straight with them.

Honest with them.

And if I ever go back on that pledge,

I don't deserve those people to be there for me.

If I falter, I lose everything.

If I make those mistakes again,

I lose my family.

There's no, "Hey, you get another shot.

Hey, we're gonna sit through this crap"... no.

No, no, no.

If I go down the rabbit hole again,

it's over.

What's important that it comes through

that I recognize why I went to prison.

I take full ownership of every bad decision I made.

Every one of 'em.

No one forced me to do anything I did.

I was an adult in clear control of my actions.

Going to prison is a lifechanging experience,

and I emerged a better person.

What I learned about myself,

other than the fact that I'm a compulsive gambler,

is that I'm a lousy businessman

and I'm good at one thing,

and that's hosting a radio show.

When you come to terms with what you're good at

and what you're not good at

and can be honest about that,

man, that's liberating.

I've spent every day for the last year

dreaming of the opportunity to be back on the radio,

and I can't wait just to flick a button

and welcome an audience into my world again.

This has been a presentation of HBO Sports.

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