Angelo Cataldi is nearing the end of his career at WIP. He has been the station’s morning show host for 33 years. The station is giving him a proper sendoff, but in a new interview with sister station KYW, Cataldi says that maybe he didn’t deserve to be on air this long.
He told his former intern Dave Uram, who conducted the interview, that he has plenty of regrets from his time on air. One of the greatest is a joke he cracked about Phillies outfielder Jim Eisenreich in 1993.
A reporter from Philadelphia Magazine was in studio with Cataldi, who joked that Eisenreich, who dealt with Tourettes Syndrome, was actually going in on then-Phillies manager Jim Fregosi. When the reporter published his quote, Cataldi felt ashamed.
“What’s wrong with me? Why would I do something like that?” Angelo Cataldi said to Uram. “And it was being swept up in the moment trying to be funny, when it wasn’t funny. And that one’s always carried with me. I’ve carried that with me all these years.”
Cataldi was fortunate that people were more accepting of that kind of humor in 1993, but he now says “they shouldn’t have been.”
He admits that it is hard to say he learned a lesson from that moment that stayed with him forever. He still makes similar mistakes.
“I’ll use this as an opportunity,” Cataldi said in recounting the story. “I’m sorry for all of you. I was trying to do my job and got too swept up in it. You deserve better.”
Before the start of the 2022 NFL season, Angelo Cataldi announced that he would stay with 94WIP until the Eagles are done. Given the run the team has been on this season, that could mean Cataldi won’t be done until the Lombardi Trophy is handed out in February.
