Eskin And Cataldi Are Ready To Roast
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — They've been going at each other for years. Now on Thursday, radio sportstalk legends Howard Eskin and Angelo Cataldi can finally spar verbally at 94WIP 2016 Philly Sports Roast on Thursday, June 16th at 7:00 p.m. in The Crystal Tea Room in Philadelphia (100 E Penn Square Philadelphia, PA 19107).
The dais will include future Hall of Fame fighter Bernard Hopkins, Mayor Jim Kenney, St. Joe's basketball coach Phil Martelli and legendary Eagles' radio play-by-play announcer Merrill Reese. The event will be hosted by the man of million voices, 94WIP's Joe Conklin.
But the true stars will be Eskin and Cataldi, generational radio voices who have shaped and cultivated the opinions of Philadelphia sports fans for decades.
"I'm really looking forward to it, because it's a real easy time to rip a guy who has so many things to be ripped for," said Eskin, laughing. "It's a really long list, and unfortunately, the roast doesn't go five, six, seven hours. Here's the thing with roasts, people come up with old tired jokes. I want to come up with real things. Real ways to rip Angelo, and there's so many that I have stored away. I may need about three or four roasts to do that, but I'll get some in there.
"There's other people on the dais that I want to rip, too, who are going to roast me. The good thing as far as I'm concerned is I have all kinds of good stories that will toast the guys. Toast them and roast them."
For a while, Cataldi genuinely didn't like "The King."
"I loathed Howard like I loathed no other person in the media for most of the time that I've been in this city," Cataldi admitted. "I felt he was a grandstander; he was a me-first guy. When we worked together, he was not in any way a teammate. He didn't nothing to promote my show when I was starting out, even though he was the big name in sports talk. In addition to that, not all of the stories that he allegedly broke turned out to be true. All of those things are true. Now, at the same time, full disclosure, he was a pioneer in this line of work and he was pretty good at it for a long time.
"However, his personality is so overpoweringly negative, that all of those pluses get lost in his beard. I expect to take him down on Thursday night for a very simple reason: I'm far more intelligent than he is. Anyone who's heard our shows already knows that."
Cutting through the rhetoric, and for one night the lampooning, the two actually respect each other.
"We do get along, this is a one night thing where you can do whatever you want, and after that, we'll be fine," Eskin said. "He's been successful. I've been successful. We've both been successful. I'm going to outlast him, because I want to. In all honestly, I can't believe that it's fun getting up at 2, 3 a.m. every morning to do a radio show. We'll both be around in some form for a while. We don't dislike each other, like it was maybe 15 years ago. I would agree that there's a respect there."
And Cataldi even gave in: "His body of work is fairly impressive. Howard is far better on TV than I ever was, and no matter how we all look at it, a lot of what we do we took from him, because he did it first. I can't deny that. However, deep down, he's an obnoxious personality. That is why I plan to prevail over him at the roast.
"I'm bringing an entire table filled with my people. I'm protected."
Cataldi and Eskin will be roasted during the 94WIP 2016 Philly Sports Roast on Thursday, June 16th at 7:00 p.m. in The Crystal Tea Room in Philadelphia (100 E Penn Square Philadelphia, PA 19107).
Tickets will be $125 (include food, drink, and a donation to Coaches vs. Cancer program in Philadelphia). Tickets went on sale on Thursday, May 5th at 9:00 a.m. You can purchase them here.
Roasters include:
Merrill Reese
Ed Rendell
Phil Martelli
Pat McLoone
Jim Kenney
Jay Black
Marc Farzetta
Bill Werndl
Bernard Hopkins
John Gonzalez
Gary Matthews
Lauren Hart (special performance)
The roast will be hosted by 94WIP's Joe Conklin.
