When Phil Mickelson joined the controversial LIV golf tour, a lot of people made their opinions heard on his motivation. Jon Heyman, a baseball columnist at the New York Post, was one of them. He fired off a tweet that ridiculed Mickelson’s gambling addiction. That caught the attention of Craig Carton.
Heyman’s tweet (seen below) summed up his opinion on Mickelson making the move to the LIV Tour and mocked his gambling addiction.
The tweet above prompted WFAN’s Craig Carton, an admitted compulsive gambler, to respond shortly after it posted. He did so first on Twitter:
This afternoon, on Carton & Roberts, Carton defended Mickelson against the tweet and its sentiments again.
“I got into it with Heyman online because Jon Heyman made a flippant comment, mocking Phil Mickelson’s now very public and very admitted gambling addiction. And his his comment on Twitter was essentially ‘all good, he’s just going to blow it on gambling’.”
Those types of comments hit very home for Carton. He served more than a year in prison for his role in a fake ticket scam in which he used portions of the money he got from investors to pay on things including his gambling debts. Since returning to the air, he has pleaded with listeners to seek help if they feel their gambling addiction is getting out of hand.
“So I, of course, reacted to that as an admitted, very public compulsive gambler. Yeah, I thought that was uncalled for.”
Carton and co-host Evan Roberts were fine with criticism of Mickelson for a myriad of other reasons that aren’t attacking his addiction.
“If you want to be critical right now, frankly, because Phil Mickelson is an easy target to criticize, I’m not disagreeing with that. How about it? But there is no reason to mock the man’s addiction. None. And I don’t think the two should be connected.”
Carton did mention that the show reached out to Heyman but was unavailable for today and was tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.
Carton closed his commentary, “But, you know, no one, no one that I’ve come across that admittedly has an addiction or is getting help for that addiction, is asking for a pat on the back for it, or acknowledging we have a problem and we’re trying to get help for it.”
