Every 50/50 raffle winner at Wrigley Field gets the same treatment: name on the videoboard, oversized novelty check, a wave to 40,000 strangers. Most of them are randos who bought a ticket on their phone in line for a hot dog. This time it was Dan "Big Cat" Katz, and the Wrigley crowd got to watch a guy who talks for a living have absolutely no idea what to do with his hands.
The Wrigley Field videoboard cutting to Big Cat holding his $54,035 check.
The check read $54,035, made out to "Big Cat," with a woman in a yellow Cubs cap sharing the frame as the crowd got the reveal. It's the kind of moment that would be a nice little clip on its own, except the guy holding the check happens to co-host one of the biggest podcasts in the country and have a camera pointed at him basically every waking hour of his life.
The Barstool feeds went nuts almost instantly. Pardon My Take's own account called it "amazing," Viva La Stool dubbed it a "classic big check wave," and Chief said the cut to Dan "made me laugh out loud." Big Cat himself leaned into the chaos of it afterward, admitting on post-7593fec8-8c6f-40ae-a293-4f4657b500cf he "did not know the camera was on me for that long" and that his "only regret is that I didn't hit a dozen dabs." He followed it up by clarifying the arm-flailing everyone clocked as a dab was actually just him "trying to wave."
Then Big Cat did what Big Cat does and turned a fun stadium bit into an actual ask. Cubs Charities splits every 50/50 jackpot down the middle, half to the winner and half to the org's community programs, so a win like this comes with real money attached beyond the novelty check. Instead of just pocketing it, he tied the win back to a donation he'd already made to Lost Boyz Inc.
Big Cat thanking Cubs Charities for the day and calling on the Ricketts family to match his Lost Boyz Inc donation.
In that post, Big Cat says he donated "all the winnings and more" to Lost Boyz Inc and Lavont Sr. last fall, and floated a number: he wants the Ricketts family to match his $75,000 donation. He was careful to frame it as not trying to "charity shame" anybody, but the ask is out there now, tagged directly at the Cubs organization, which means it's not going away quietly. He also made sure to shout out "Renee" by name as "the best in the business," presumably one of the Cubs Charities staffers who ran him through the on-field bit.
Big Cat wasn't done playing raffle guy for the day, either. He noted he was still sitting on a stack of 50/50 tickets with "so much pressure" riding on them, before closing the loop hours later with a joke about a different, fictional split.
Big Cat's follow-up joke after the raffle win, riffing on a made-up 51/49 split.
I did not win the 51/49 No questions at this time
None of this changes the standings or the Cubs' season, obviously. But it's the kind of viral, low-stakes moment that Barstool's whole audience lives for: their guy on a jumbotron, mid-celebration, immediately turning it into a bit and then a genuine charity push in the same breath. Whether the Ricketts family actually answers the $75,000 call is the real thing worth watching now — everything else was just a very good wave.