How’s Katman’s kid doing? I can’t tell you how many times I hear that question in the Course of a year at US99.5.<\/p>\n
John the “Katman” Katzback was a zenith, a superstar in Chicago radio, making his way in life. By all accounts a great guy; I mean everyone loved this guy.<\/p>\n
Honestly a lot of people who worked the morning show back then were closer to him than me. But the following is why and how his passing shaped my life.<\/p>\n
John and I would cross paths on weekends when he came in last-minute to do his “cutting edge show” usually with his beautiful wife Leslie on his arm, providing fodder \u2014 usually two or three beers in after a weekend cubs game.<\/p>\n
We never talked much radio, just our future wives as we were both engaged and later we had kids just a few months apart. I was hired to do nights at US99, while he was the new kid on the morning show with my friend and mentor JD Spangler.<\/p>\n
I will always remember when I got the call that John had passed; I was building a deck on the very first house I owned in West Chicago. It was shock, followed by hurt that he and Les just had a baby named Max. At that point you don’t give a shit about your job, you just ponder the question that has no answers. That question is why?<\/p>\n
Management at US99 thought it was a good idea to get someone to help out the morning show immediately after John’s passing \u2014 they called me. I said no, they said “You don’t have a choice”, I hesitated as anyone would, but as it turns out JD needed me \u2014 the rest is history.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I got a message on my Facebook from Max, John’s son. “Hey are you the guy that worked with my dad, I’m his son” we then went on to send several messages that ended in a promise to take him to a Cubs game \u2014 just like his dad would have wanted us too…its long overdue.<\/p>\n
By all accounts, he’s doing well, and judging from his picture’s, he is his father’s son. I love that.<\/p>\n
When I said he shaped my life here’s why. We were the same age, going through the same thing. We had kids. I always think of how Max missed out on so much with John being gone. Honestly, you wonder why it wasn’t you. There’s a bit of guilt, and then you talk to his boy and it all comes back.<\/p>\n
To US99 listeners, if you remember the Katman, his boy is doing well, so is his family and his mom, and rest assured that someday this summer under a clear blue sky, the guys who drank with his dad will now drink one, or two with him.<\/p>\n
What JD Spangler built, is different now. But the core of that group all keeps in touch. Big, Mick, T get ready we have a game to attend.<\/p>\n
RR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How’s Katman’s kid doing? I can’t tell you how many times I hear that question in the Course of a year at US99.5. John the “Katman” [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[39,36,35,37,30,29],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-jd-spangler","tag-john-katman-katzback","tag-katman","tag-us99","tag-us99-5"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yOYN-3x","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblinraystevens.com\/staging\/6162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}