Since becoming JB’s #2 in 2018, there have been a lot of people that I have met that have been influential on my career and the way I look at the sports media business. There has only been one person that I have never met, never even corresponded with, that I can say has changed the way I look at sports radio and its relationship with the audience. That person is Angelo Cataldi.
I am not even sure I would call myself a Cataldi fan. I don’t dislike his show by any means. I just don’t go out of my way to seek out his content. He is always the example I use of just how much I have learned these last five years. I have never lived north of the Carolinas. When I started at Barrett Sports Media, I had never heard his name. Now, I cannot imagine Philadelphia sports without his influence.
There is so much in this last year that has impressed me about Angelo Cataldi as he prepares to say goodbye to WIP. Amidst all the fanfare and career retrospectives, one interview has stood out to me.
Just last week, Cataldi sat down with Dave Uram for a look back at his career. Uram and Cataldi have a relationship that goes back decades to when Uram was an intern working behind the scenes at WIP. He was the right guy to guide Cataldi through a look back at his career because he knew exactly what to ask.
One thing that Cataldi said in the interview that jumped out to me was that he believes that he deserved to be fired in 1993.
A reporter from Philadelphia Magazine was in studio to write a profile piece about Angelo Cataldi. During their conversation, Cataldi made fun of Phillies outfielder Jim Eisenreich.
Eisenreich was known to suffer from Tourette’s syndrome. Cataldi joked that his outbursts were not a result of the disorder, but showed Eisenreich’s true feelings for his manager at the time, Jim Fregosi.
What I found so compelling about this is that Cataldi could have read the piece in Philadelphia Magazine and gone on with his life. He could have had the “all publicity is good publicity” mindset and never given a second thought to what he said.
After all, who the hell are Jim Eisenreich and Jim Fregosi in the grand scheme of Philadelphia sports history? Eisenreich played there for just four of his 15 Major League seasons. Between being a manager and his playing days, Fregosi was in Major League Baseball from 1961 until 2000. That is 40 years. Only six of them were spent in The City of Brotherly Love. Add to that the reality that Cataldi wasn’t the only person in the early 90s treating Tourettes syndrome like a joke.
It would have been so easy not to give a comment like the one he made a second thought, but that isn’t who Angelo Cataldi is. Privately, he admits, that seeing his words in print made him feel shame.
“It was being swept up in the moment trying to be funny when it wasn’t funny,” he told Uram. “And that one’s always carried with me. I’ve carried that with me all these years.”
Here’s the other part that was so intriguing to me. Cataldi admitted that he carries the shame of that moment with him. He says that he isn’t so sure people should have brushed it off as “just a joke” the way they did in 1993. He feels real remorse, and yet he never pretends that he learned his lesson and did better from that day on.
Sports radio is its own weird thing in the sports media landscape. Sure, some people are reporters, but there is no other platform that thrives totally on the host’s ability to entertain. So much of the content comes together in the moment and plenty of our colleagues are quick to defend a misstep by telling their audience that if they cannot take a joke, that is their own problem.
I cannot say I know the entire Angelo Cataldi canon. I am sure there are plenty of people that think he is an unforgivable asshole for something I am not even aware happened. As I said, I am a lifelong Southerner. Five years ago, I had never heard the guy’s name.
The circumstances of this interview, where he decided to reveal that maybe he didn’t deserve to have the long career that he has enjoyed, are interesting. It was done by someone he has known for years for another Audacy property. The environment was perfect for myth-making and self-congratulations. Instead, Angelo Cataldi chose to be vulnerable and introspective and face some harsh self-criticism.
You need to be able to do that in order to learn more about yourself and your values. You need to know yourself and your values in order to grow as a human being. Angelo Cataldi may be ready to call it a career, but it isn’t because he’s no longer interesting.
