Hour 1: Carton: Why You Can’t Trust Aaron Judge in the Postseason

Craig Carton (0:04)

It's The Carton Show with Big Mac on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon in New York City. Phone number to join as always, 888-808-1019.

We got the beginning of what we call here a WFAA of the afternoons, 60 Days to Greatness. Starting today, 60 Days to Greatness. That means a Yankee World Series win, the Giants maybe going to the playoffs, the Jets trying to go to the playoffs, the Knicks starting their season off and defending a championship, and one of the three hockey teams in this town playing postseason hockey. 60 Days to Greatness starts today, Big Mac.

Chris McMonigle (0:49)

How are you today? I'm doing great. Look at you. Very excited.

Craig Carton (0:52)

I'm very pumped up.

Chris McMonigle (0:53)

You're very confident.

Craig Carton (0:54)

Yes, I...

Chris McMonigle (0:55)

I wish I shared your confidence.

Craig Carton (0:56)

And I'm rooting for all the local teams. Other than the Mets, they suck. They're always going to suck. I hate them. I don't care about them. They don't exist in my world. Outside of that, let's go New York. Now, to that end, we got lots cooking today. Randy Levine's going to join us a little bit later on this afternoon as the Yankees lose to Aaron Judge yesterday, as you know. And he obviously lose the game to the Twins and probably lose out in the division. But there's a bigger story right now.

And I want to be the first to get in on it, okay?

The New York Knickerbockers announced an apology to people today. And I think you should accept it after they brought us our first basketball championship in 53 years. So here's the story real quick, okay? Okay. You may have seen over the last week or so that the ticket prices for Nick Ames were outrageous beyond what they normally are, which is always expensive. We know that going in. But some of the ticket prices, even in the upper deck, were listed on the primary market for like a thousand dollars. People went crazy. Oh, what are the Knicks doing? The Fleece are their fans. It's that the other. They made a mistake.

The New York Knicks, unlike a lot of teams, raised their hands and said, we made a mistake. We made a clerical error. The error is on us. We apologize for that error. At no point did we discuss or want to charge our fans thousands of dollars for a ticket in section 300 whatever.

Courtside tickets are different. We know that going in. None of us can afford courtside seats. We're talking about the blue collar seats, right? Right. So they put out a press release today saying, we apologize.

We made a mistake. We are not raising ticket prices to that level. We are raising ticket prices 12% across the board. Now, if you bought a season ticket for the upcoming season at the astronomical prices, you are going to be refunded the difference in the actual cost versus the mistaken cost. Okay. I don't know why people have a problem with that. No. The Knicks acknowledged they made a mistake. They rectified the mistake. They took ownership of the mistake. And now they're correcting the mistake. And let's not forget, the New York Knicks are world champions. And here's the other crazy part about this story that nobody wants to talk about.

Even with the mistaken ticket prices, every seat was sold.

Let that sink in. They could have just said, You know what? We sold every seat. We're good. But because they care about the fan, the level they do, because they brought us the championship we haven't had here in 53 years or since 2011 with the New York Giants, they said, We're not going to do that to our fan base. We're going to bring the ticket prices back down. Now, the Knicks have a long standing policy. When we don't make the playoffs, we do not raise ticket prices. And they've been very steadfast on that. But when you win a championship, you raise ticket prices because that's called smart business. So I just want to acknowledge that for everybody that's gone crazy about the Knicks in ticket prices, they made a mistake, they own that mistake, they've corrected that mistake. And oh, by the way, on October 20th, they're raising a banner to celebrate a championship.

Chris McMonigle (4:35)

They won a championship. I don't care what they charge for ticket prices. We all knew they were absurd, but to your point, they were sold out.

Craig Carton (4:41)

Which is crazy.

Chris McMonigle (4:42)

So it is crazy.

SPEAKER_3 (4:43)

Like a thousand bucks a per deck.

Chris McMonigle (4:45)

And what is how you govern or decide what ticket prices are fair or reasonable? What people will pay for them? So in reality, did they overcharge or did they charge exactly what they should have?