Philly sports fans aren’t the worst. They’re the best.

When Kenny Justice called WIP-FM one morning in April 2021, he had no inkling that he was about to save his own life.

All he wanted to do that day was complain about the Eagles. He had been calling the morning radio show for more than a quarter-century — hundreds and hundreds of angst-filled grievances — and this was certainly no different.

But at the end of the conversation, I surprised him with a question that he didn’t expect. As host of the show for 33 years, I knew Kenny on and off the air, and I had heard that he was dealing with a crisis far worse than that of the Eagles.

“Where are you going right now?” I asked.

“Uh, ah, I’m going to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“For a dialysis treatment.”

A successful engineer and lifelong Philadelphia sports fan, Kenny was just 55, and he was dealing with a frightening question: Would he get to see his two children grow up? He had kidney disease, and the only hope for a long life was a transplant.

At the end of his call, Kenny gave information for possible organ donors, just in case there was someone out there with a good kidney to spare.

By the end of that day, Kenny did not get that one lifesaving response.

He got 28.

Let that sink in for a second. More than two dozen Philadelphia sports fans who knew Kenny only by the sound of his voice immediately offered to give up an organ for him.

How is this possible? How could the same drunks who booed Donovan McNabb at the 1999 NFL Draft show so much respect for another fan? How could the same louts who pelted J.D. Drew with batteries (also in 1999) transform into such caring people? And yes, how could the city that pelted Santa Claus with snowballs in 1968 be so different than its national image?

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Just last month, Chauncey “C.J.” Gardner-Johnson — who played football for all of one season here — was the latest to take aim at the easiest fan target in American sports.

“They’re obnoxious,” he said, inserting an expletive in between those two words.

Chauncey, meet Kenny Justice. He has a full life and a promising future because of those same obnoxious fans. (One caller gave a kidney to someone else, which moved Kenny to the top of the list.)

The problem here is very simple, really. Critics like Gardner-Johnson are focusing on the wrong part of our fans. They’re obsessed with Philadelphia’s vocal cords when they should be examining its heart.

You will never see Kenny Justice’s story in the national media because it contradicts a lazy narrative about our city’s sports fans that started with those snowballs and grew — I confess — during my loud tenure at WIP. I know this fact to be true because I got to talk, every day, to these complicated but generally wonderful people.

The truth is, the boos, the batteries, and the snowballs were the aberrations.

Behind that crusty facade is a city that has a passion for sports, and for kindness, unlike any other. That’s why, the day after I retired in February, I began writing a book that is partially a confession for all my many sins, but more an homage to the people who made the job such an honor to hold for so long.

During my time at WIP, I met a loudmouth cabbie named Arson Arnie who took my son to sports events when my schedule prevented me from performing my fatherly duties. I became friends with a woman named Eagle Shirley Dash who took me back to a place I had not gone for years: church. I made a movie with SuperPhan (Vince Mola), got suspended for defending the fans’ right to eat hoagies (which exceeded the Linc’s size restrictions on outside packages), and hosted a party for 26 years called Wing Bowl.

My goal in writing LOUD — that’s the name of the book, scheduled for release on Nov. 28 — is to melt the snowballs that those fans threw at Santa 55 years ago.

Now, I am no idiot, despite my blowhard radio persona. I know already that my quest is destined to fail. The last thing any national media person wants to hear is how nice Philly fans really are.

But I have two advantages over the naysayers. One is experience. I did the homework. I got to know the people. And two, I’m not lazy. I prefer not to accept tired tropes. I like to think for myself. (Imagine that.)

So here’s the truth about the people who love sports in our city, based on extensive research.

They are loyal, almost to a fault. In good years and bad, you will be hard-pressed to find an empty seat at an Eagles game.

They love a winner. Have there ever been louder crowds, anywhere, than last fall for the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park? Yes, the fans boo when warranted, but what about those cheers? The passion cuts both ways.

They are truly a community. Without exception, when callers asked for help on the air, they received it, instantly, from dozens of caring fans. Need help getting a cat stuck in a tree? How about digging out the driveway of a snowed-in senior citizen? Or joining a campaign to get a beloved Philadelphia player into the Hall of Fame? Yes, yes, yes.

They are willing to embrace outsiders. I know this because I grew up in New England (Providence, R.I.), and Philadelphians needed some time to accept my weird accent and nerdy ways, but they did. All you need to do to win them over is to share their passion and show them some respect.

My first lesson in what the fans are really like here came in 1985 at West Chester University, when a boisterous coach named Buddy Ryan commanded a microphone at training camp and told 8,000 fans that the Eagles were going to sweep all eight games against their formidable rivals in the NFC East, an unlikely prospect given the team’s 7-9-0 record the previous season.

I was working at The Inquirer back then, five years before my move to radio, and I applied the journalistic standards taught to me at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I was going to hold Ryan accountable for all of his outrageous statements.

My beat coverage of Ryan’s initial season earned me a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize. I was doing what I was trained to do at the best journalism school in the world. Cover sports the way the media covers City Hall, they taught me. And I did.

Only now that I have gotten to know my audience do I realize how wrong I was, how unjust it would have been if I had actually won that award. The fans knew Ryan was just popping off. They admired his moxie. What he predicted didn’t come to pass (the Eagles’ record his first season was a mere 5-10-1), but the fans didn’t care that nothing Ryan said would actually happen.

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Ryan’s five years as Eagles coach earned the team not a single playoff win, but it also ushered in the most fervent period of fan interest in the franchise’s history, an era that continues to this day.

Before Ryan, some Eagles games did not sell out. Since the 1990s, every seat has been sold, with tens of thousands of fans on waiting lists for season tickets.

Ryan offered something the fans were desperate to hear: passion. Ryan was an extension of the fans himself, grumbling with disdain when a player failed and cackling with pride when he beat the hated Dallas Cowboys. He cared.

Even after the Buddy Ryan lesson, it took me a decade on the radio to understand the psyche of the Philadelphia sports fan, a spirit fueled by equal measures of hope and disappointment. This blue-collar city uses sports to process all of the good and bad in their lives.

This blue-collar city uses sports to process all of the good and bad in their lives.

When the Phillies go on a run all the way to the World Series like they did last year, those foundation-rattling cheers are not just for the team. The fans are channeling all of their joys — the birth of children, the promotion at work, maybe just a great meal.

And when the world topples over, the equally stunning boos reflect all of life’s slights — the fight with a spouse, the bad investment, a repressive boss whose scowl is a daily challenge.

At the very start of my radio days, Bill Giles was speaking as the owner of the Phillies when he told me the only real threat to his franchise was apathy. If the fans were complaining about his team, they still cared. In the three decades-plus since then, apathy has never been a problem for the Phillies.

In fact, the reason Philadelphia ranks among the best sports cities in the world is that apathy almost never prevails. (The possible exception is the Flyers right now, who have earned that emotion with a long run of failure.) There is rarely a lack of noise at sports events here. This is a loud city.

The single moment in my 33 years here that defined my tenure came in 1999, when I took a band of zealots to the NFL Draft at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden to cheer the inevitable selection of quirky, talented running back Ricky Williams with the second pick. How could I say no? Our esteemed mayor, Ed Rendell, all but demanded our presence there.

As you no doubt know by now, the Eagles did not select Williams that day. They picked a quarterback named Donovan McNabb, who received a boo unlike any other at the outset of a professional career in sports history. It was not his fault, of course. The reaction that day was an instinctive response when we didn’t hear Williams’ name. But the young player from Syracuse didn’t know that at the time.

McNabb never got over that moment, even though he became the best quarterback in Eagles history and a far better NFL player than Williams. To this day, he still reflects on that boo with revulsion. He never could grasp the story behind those howls of protest. After over a decade of playing here, he never really took the time to understand the fans.

How could a fan base that saved Kenny Justice’s life be so cruel to a young athlete? How could the same fans who regularly punch each other in the stands offer a dying man one of their own kidneys? How could the worst sports fans in America — obnoxious fans, according to Chauncey Gardner-Johnson — be so thoughtful and kind?

It’s simple. In good times and bad, they give a damn.

How is that a bad thing?

When I left WIP the week after the Eagles blew the Super Bowl in February, I got a send-off far better than I deserved. Fans are still thanking me today for my service to them. I always reply with my glib version of the truth: I did it for the money. If the checks stopped coming, I would have stopped showing up for work.

But that isn’t entirely true.

When I got here in 1983, a shy nerd from Rhode Island, I knew I was coming to a sports city like no other. What I didn’t know is that I was coming to a city that would give you not just the shirt off its back, but a kidney, too, if you needed one.

I really, really hope that my book, in some minuscule way, changes the narrative about the fans of Philadelphia. I would love to believe that the next time a national broadcaster is mentioning the snowballs and Santa Claus that they will add the story of Kenny Justice and his kidney.

By the way, Kenny is doing just fine these days. As a result of his call that morning, he got the kidney and has made a full recovery. You can find him at any of the four major sports teams’ games this year. He will be one of many people screaming for joy when a Philadelphia player hits a home run or scores a touchdown.

And he will also be one of countless fans booing themselves hoarse after a bad play or a tough loss.

Hey, he’s got to put that new kidney to good use, doesn’t he?

Angelo Cataldi was a broadcaster on WIP-FM for more than three decades and a former sportswriter at The Inquirer. His new book, “LOUD,” will be published Nov. 28.