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<\/a>On the other side of the card, small text lays out the definition of Delco. Close-knit. Proud. Full of passion for local sports (Go Birds) and neighborhoods that each have their own personality. The card reads: \u201cA place that embodies a down-to-earth and authentic way of life.\u201d<\/p>\nDelco has become a brand. People wear it on T-shirts and hats. It\u2019s also enough to worry a few who grew up around here, those who stomped across the county\u2019s streets and drank at its bars long before anyone regularly called it \u201cDelco.\u201d They don\u2019t want the gift-shop schtick. They don\u2019t want to cheapen the character.<\/p>\n
This is a county with firmly established borders. Within the place, though, there are different, looser definitions for what counts as the real Delco. Small as the county is, its landscape is diverse. Farmland lines its western edges. The county\u2019s northeast border melts into the Philadelphia Main Line and the old-money suburbs. The east side backs up into West Philadelphia and the PHL airport. And then there\u2019s Chester, an actual city.<\/p>\n
The smaller, working-class towns that dot the southeast part of the county are filled with the types of pubs and taverns that give a place character. Where McGonigle grew up in Aldan, a VFW \u2014 the Aldan Memorial Legion Post \u2014is right next to the Little League field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of bars,\u201d Kevin McGonigle said, \u201cthat are sketchy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me,\u201d Kevin George said, \u201cThat\u2019s Delco.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Mary\u2019s Cafe, a smoking, cash-only bar in Clifton Heights, regulars might pass over an ashtray without asking as soon as you take a seat. On a Tuesday night, four TVs were on the Phillies. Two were showing the Tigers.<\/p>\n
Kevin McGonigle grew up a Phillies fan. He had a signed picture of Cole Hamels on the wall. He famously idolized Chase Utley, perhaps the player his game most resembles.<\/p>\n
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\n Kevin McGonigle grew up attending Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park. Now he\u2019ll play in an All-Star Game there. (Courtesy of Kevin George McGonigle)<\/p>\n
The past matters around here, and there are parts of Delco that feel like going back in time. Even in a place with access to four major pro sports teams, local high school games can become the stuff of legend. Rivalries are fierce.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of trash talking,\u201d McGonigle said.<\/p>\n
His two closest friends were Michael Anderson and Joey DeMucci. They grew up playing sports, popping wheelies and fishing in creeks. \u201cRunning around Delaware County with our heads on fire,\u201d McGonigle said this year on the \u201cHave a Seat\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n
DeMucci is also a ballplayer. He spent two years at Monmouth before finishing his college career at Penn State this past season. When he was in New Jersey, he reveled in the reactions he would get when he told people he was from Delco. Do you have an accent? Do you say \u201cwater\u201d like \u201cwooder\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople know Delco,\u201d DeMucci said. \u201cYou say, \u2018Oh, where are you from?\u2019 and you say, \u2018Delco,\u2019 they kind of laugh at you, like, \u2018Oh my gosh.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Wednesday at noon when Kevin George McGonigle walks into Johnny B\u2019s in Drexel Hill. He steps to the bar, orders a drink and a cheesesteak.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat time is the game today?\u201d the bartender asks.<\/p>\n
Mike Walsh is the barkeep. He has a son one year younger than McGonigle who also played baseball. Walsh has always loved the sport, but for a few years, he had fallen away from following the day-to-day rigamarole of MLB. That\u2019s changed this year because of Kevin McGonigle. Once a diehard Phillies fan, Walsh is now locked in on the Tigers. He\u2019s collecting baseball cards again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brought me back into the game big time,\u201d Walsh says.<\/p>\n
Early in the season, when the Phillies were off to a cold start, Tom McCormack, who runs the local C&M Sporting Goods store, was at a local watering hole called Barnaby\u2019s when someone walked by wearing a McGonigle Tigers shirt. The two started talking. Half-jokingly, the man suggested McCormack should order some for his store.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Phillies were stinking up the joint,\u201d McCormack said. \u201cI was like, \u2018That\u2019s not a bad idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019re on their third order of McGonigle shirseys. While McCormack is talking on a Tuesday morning, the phone rings. A woman named Amy, whose son grew up playing with McGonigle, answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have some McGonigle shirts, yes,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat size are you looking for?\u201d<\/p>\n
McCormack himself went to Haverford High School. Met his wife, Heather, there. They moved out of the area for six or seven years, then came back. The sporting goods store was Heather\u2019s family business.<\/p>\n
The McCormacks now live in Springfield. Around here, there is a Springfield Township in Montgomery County and a Springfield Township in Delaware County. You have to specify, McCormack says, when you\u2019re from Delco Springfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody said you\u2019re either mated, dated or related,\u201d he said. \u201cIt hits a little too close. Everybody from Springfield meets somebody from Springfield, then marries somebody from Springfield, then eventually moves back to Springfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tracy McGonigle still lives in Aldan and works as an executive assistant at a water supply company. Her father was born in West Philadelphia and worked in the fur industry for 40 years. Tracy raised Kevin and his older brother and sister with a strong foundation.<\/p>\n
Ever since spring training, she has been getting stopped at the grocery store. Her phone gets a near-constant barrage of congratulatory texts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re blessed,\u201d she had said, \u201cwith a lot of good people in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Memorial Day weekend, she organized a trip up to Baltimore to see the Tigers play. The night prior, an emergency appendectomy landed her in the hospital. She woke up the next morning feeling fine and proceeded to Baltimore anyway. She joined about 300 neighbors who road-tripped from Delco. They packed Pickles Pub across Camden Yards.<\/p>\n
The morning of a series finale against the Yankees, almost 50 people met up at McGonigle\u2019s old high school, Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast, and took a bus to New York. They crowded the stands, many of them wearing green Bonner shirts with McGonigle\u2019s name on the back.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not a kid anymore. But to me, he is,\u201d Tracy said. \u201cI miss him terribly when he\u2019s not here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although many of McGonigle\u2019s friends went on to Penn State and other universities around the area, some went straight into the trades and got union jobs as steamfitters or carpenters.<\/p>\n
At Clam Tavern in Clifton Heights, a server is working while her mother and daughter both sit at the bar. The two young men bartending look like they could be about Kevin McGonigle\u2019s age.<\/p>\n
All around Aldan, there are reminders of the distance between where he\u2019s from and where he is now.<\/p>\n
Kevin McGonigle was the local prodigy, the kid everyone knew was built differently than the rest.<\/p>\n
Steve DeBarberie, the baseball coach at Bonner, once ventured to watch a few Drexel Hill Little League games, peering into the crystal ball at his next crop of players. McGonigle, as he tends to do, was lasering balls all over the field. DeBarberie thought, \u201cMan, he\u2019d be our starting shortstop right now, as a seventh-grader, on our varsity team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bold as his talent was, McGonigle wouldn\u2019t stand out in a team photo. He had a short and compact build. He did not possess blinding speed or any sort of next-level athleticism. What he did have was a sweet simplicity. His swing was remarkably consistent. He was always on time.<\/p>\n
McGonigle, DeBarberie said, was the type of kid who got along with all sorts of crowds. He could be quiet and polite. The field brought out the fire that simmered inside. He went to Bonner (once an all-boys school before budget cuts and dwindling enrollments forced a merger with the all-girls school Prendergast) because practically everyone on his mother\u2019s side went to either Bonner or Prendie.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is literally the nicest kid ever,\u201d DeBarberie said. \u201cBut he\u2019s got that fire in him where, if there was a kid on our team who was slacking off or not doing things the right way, he\u2019ll get in your face and he\u2019ll chew you out a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGonigle wasn\u2019t one of those wunderkind travel-ball kids decked out in colorful gear and necklaces. He didn\u2019t have highly paid private hitting instructors. He instead drilled with his father, swinging day after day in a cage set up in a friend\u2019s backyard in Havertown. His father was famously hard on him. Kevin George still texts after each game with some praise but also one thing he could have done better.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad,\u201d McGonigle said, \u201cis the definition of a Delco dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Kevin McGonigle came up through local youth teams, without much of the private instruction that buoyed so many of his MLB peers. (Courtesy of Kevin George McGonigle)<\/p>\n
McGonigle committed to play at Auburn when he was still a freshman. To so many who have watched McGonigle, the never-back-down style stems from the place that raised him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere he\u2019s from, that area, those kids are just tough,\u201d Auburn coach Butch Thompson said. \u201cThere was an early toughness, an early confidence, an early grit. All those words we overuse, but it was real with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2023, McGonigle was drafted at No. 37 overall and forwent his Auburn commitment to sign with the Detroit Tigers.<\/p>\n
Like many in Delaware County, DeBarberie is a passionate, if not perpetually disgruntled, Phillies fan. He was irked the Phillies passed on McGonigle at No. 27 (they selected infielder Aidan Miller, now MLB\u2019s No. 6 overall prospect).<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so pissed off,\u201d DeBarberie said. \u201cThey could have had him at 27. I was just like, \u2018What are we doing?\u2019 Last year, even when he\u2019s in High A and Double A, I\u2019m telling people, \u2018He\u2019s better than Bryson Stott right now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, McGonigle finally has a hitting coach besides his father. He trains in the offseason at Ascent Athlete, a sprawling, 40,000-square-foot facility down a winding road in Garnet Valley, out in Delaware County\u2019s western edges. A whiteboard in the facility contains the message: Do something hard.<\/p>\n
His coach is Alex Kramer, a Jersey native who coached at a handful of different colleges in the area.<\/p>\n
Growing up just across the state line, Kramer said he once thought anyone with an accent was just from Philly. The longer Kramer has been around, the more he\u2019s come to understand what makes Delco distinct.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so funny hearing a 9- or 10-year-old kid with a thick Delco accent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The people here, he says, are hard-working. Some kids stay at the facility all day until their parents can get off work and come pick them up. The kids eventually start to embody the same work ethic.<\/p>\n
This is something Kramer sees in his prize pupil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever you see is exactly who and what Kevin McGonigle is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After the cheesesteak, Kevin George ends up back at Mary\u2019s, only a few blocks from the small, two-story home where McGonigle was raised. Mary\u2019s is a small brick building. A dimly lit dive where 50 people feels like a packed house.<\/p>\n
The Tigers are playing the Yankees, and Kevin George is posted up near the TV when his son blasts a first-pitch curveball 422 feet into the right-field bleachers. The people around him in this old joint go nuts. All day, people are coming up to him, congratulating him on his son\u2019s success. Everyone is asking whether Kevin will make the All-Star game. One guy, though, keeps teasing him about an onside kick he muffed back in the \u201980s. It\u2019s still a sore subject.<\/p>\n
When Kevin George allows himself to zoom out, a tough guy gets a little emotional. He was born and raised in nearby Darby, one of seven siblings. His father ran an auto shop, built a life and reputation for his family. Kevin George is now a marine machinist down at the Navy yards, working on getting submarines out to sea.<\/p>\n
There was a time, though, after he and Tracy divorced, when Kevin George was between jobs. He said he would visit places like Mary\u2019s, Tony\u2019s in Collingdale and Red Lantern Tavern in Glenolden, selling chance raffles and other fundraisers to help pay for Kevin\u2019s travel ball.<\/p>\n
Locals now line the bar at Mary\u2019s, supporting the family in a different way. One of them is Bill Coppock. He\u2019s another Delco lifer who grew up in Ridley. He knew Kevin George when they were in grade school. They played sports together, then coached their kids together.<\/p>\n
Coppock is a Philadelphia union carpenter. Bright green shirt, sweat-stained bandana under his hat. He bought his house in Collingdale because it\u2019s four blocks from the bar Tony\u2019s, the place, he said, \u201cwhere I\u2019ve spent more time than anywhere else on the entire planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Coppock is in on the merchandise. He leaves the bar to tend to an errand, then comes back and proudly hands a visitor a magnet shaped like Delaware County.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a place,\u201d the magnet reads. \u201cIt\u2019s a lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t so long ago Kevin George was scraping together money from these bars, helping fuel a dream he and his son shared. Now he\u2019s sitting there, Budweiser by his side. More people are in line to buy him drinks while they watch his son play. People keep asking whether Kevin will make the All-Star Game.<\/p>\n
McGonigle is becoming one of Delco\u2019s proudest exports, part of its postcard to the world. His intensity, his consistency and his dirt-caked jerseys serve as a reflection of the place\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of people from the area, whatever job they\u2019re doing, they work very hard at it,\u201d McGonigle said. \u201cThey never give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a Tigers telecast hours before Saturday\u2019s roster reveal, broadcast Jason Benetti talked about McGonigle\u2019s All-Star candidacy and what it would mean for the place that raised him.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine,\u201d he said, \u201cthe party in Delaware County.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALDAN, Pa. \u2014 At the June 3 city council meeting in Upper Darby, Pa., a woman named Joanne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4671,1423,1425,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-243528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-mlb","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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