Hour 1: Judging Possibilities

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

College football is back, so Hilton called on me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Wanna make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Ooh, that smells lucky.

Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 555 in 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

This is The Michael Kay Show Podcast.

SPEAKER_4 (0:34)

I gotta get more Kay.

SPEAKER_3 (0:35)

Listen live weekdays at 1 on the Espn New York app and your smart speaker.

SPEAKER_4 (0:41)

No Michael Kay!

Jake Asman (0:42)

No Michael Kay! Jake Asbin in for Michael.

But Michael Kay will be on the show today. He just won't be on the entire show. Michael Kay will join me live from Yankee Stadium before the CC Sabathia number retirement ceremony at 2 o'clock. So, no Michael Kay right now, Don LaGreca.

SPEAKER_5 (1:03)

No Michael Kay!

Jake Asman (1:05)

But there will be Michael Kay on his own radio show. Until then, you got me, and we certainly got a lot to talk about on a Football Friday. As Michael would say, it's also a free-for-all Friday. Number to call to be part of our show, 800-919-3776, 800-919. Espn is the number. We got Ray, we got Tom producing, and there's so many different interesting New York sport topics to opine on. And I will start with the Yankees. I'm going to call the Yankees out directly. They're screwing over the fans with the CC Sabathia ceremony later today. So the ceremony was supposed to be tomorrow. Unfortunately, the weather this entire weekend is awful. So they moved the games to today, right? They moved the ceremony up. The Yankees are playing a double header today. Gates open at 2.30. The ceremony for CC, which again was supposed to be Saturday, is now going to start today around 3.15. And Derek Jeter, by the way, is among those expected to attend. But I really hope the Yankees use this as a lesson to not schedule such an important event like a jersey retirement ceremony during the last series of the regular season. Because if you bought a ticket and paid a sticker price, either from the Yankees or on the secondary market, to go and see CeCe Sabathia tomorrow night get his jersey retired, your ticket for that game tomorrow is not good for the game today.

This is a single-admission double-header. Game one starts at 4.05, game two starts at 7.05, or 30 minutes after the opener ends, whichever is later. So again, if you paid money to see CeCe Sabathia get his jersey retired, watch the whole thing, you can't go to the game today with that ticket. That's terrible for fans.

And it's also terrible for CeCe Sabathia, who is one of my favorite Yankees, and I'm sure many people's favorite Yankees ever. Because how many people are actually going to be in the ballpark today, on a Friday, where it's not great weather outside, and the ceremony starts at 3.15? Like all the people who made plans to be there to watch CeCe, made plans, I'm sure, weeks ago, months ago even. So it's just bad all around that if you had a ticket for the ceremony for Saturday's game, unless you buy a new one, you can't go today. And if you had a ticket for Friday's game, well guess what? Now you get two for the price of one. And it was supposed to be tonight Josh Hart Bobblehead night, which you know would draw a big crowd anyway. So the first 18,000 fans that had a ticket for Friday's game, you get a Josh Hart Bobblehead. Well now, the gates opened today at 2.30, and the first 18,000 get the Hart Bobblehead. So maybe people made plans specifically to get the Josh Hart Bobblehead. Well, now you might be screwed if you can't get out of work or you can't get out of school to be there at 2.30, because by the time you do get there, potentially they're all gone. So no one wins here. I feel the worst for Cece because he deserves a sold out Yankee Stadium, which it would have been tomorrow, with everyone going nuts to see number 52 be retired. And the Yankees don't win in 2009 without Cece Sanmatheo. They haven't won a championship since.

You know, for a lot of Yankee fans, you're not old enough to remember the Yankee dynasty of the 90s. You're not. I don't claim those championships as a 31-year-old. The only Yankee championship I claim that I was alive, a diehard fan, lived through every game, is 2009 So A-Rod and Cece and that team with Joe Girardi, that will always have a very special place in my heart and many people around my age who don't have the 90s teams that they fully remember. I was alive for it, but I'm not going to claim it when I was in kindergarten when the Yankees beat the Mets in 2000