PHILADELPHIA — They will flock to Citizens Bank Park from both sides of the Delaware River, a contingent from Millville, New Jersey, taking I-76 over the Walt Whitman Bridge, another coming from the other direction on the interstate, or simply on surface streets from the proud territory the locals simply call Delco.
Mike Trout has secured 20 tickets for friends and family and knows many more will flock to Philly, intent on seeing the surefire Hall of Famer in what he acknowledges might be his goodbye to the All-Star Game.
Kevin McGonigle didn’t put a number on his ticket count, the Detroit Tigers’ outstanding rookie simply describing the entry fee to his inner circle for this, the first of what the baseball industry expects will be many Midsummer Classics for him.
“I want everyone here that helped me get here. I wouldn’t be in this seat without them,’ McGonigle said one day before the Tuesday, July 14 All-Star Game.
“I think they should take the whole experience in with me.”
This Brotherly Love All-Star Game will mark both joyful beginnings and wistful remembrances, the circle of baseball life connecting a first-time Tiger and a long-time Angel playing in his 12th, yet humbled by injury and the feeling of athletic mortality.
“I never take anything for granted in this game. You never know when your last game is, or when an injury can pop up,” says Trout, the three-time MVP with 422 career home runs yet with three seasons of 82 or fewer games played in his last five.
“Especially these last few years, it’s been tough for me. But I’m just excited. I’m honored to put on the jersey every day.”
It is also an ode to the Philly guy, a specimen typically brash and unyielding, their fandom for the Phillies and Eagles and Sixers and Flyers often crass, occasionally cruel.
Trout, he of the $427 million contract, has sat in the finest seats at Lincoln Financial Field for Eagles games, his 6-foot-4, 225-pound frame hard to miss in the end zone viewing area.
McGonigle? Heck, just four years ago, he was that Philly bro in the stands at the World Series in Citizens Bank Park, heartily heckling the Houston Astros alongside his high school buddies.
This week, he is American League teammates with one of those Astros – slugger Yordan Alvarez.
In their All-Star journeys, Trout, 34, and McGonigle, 21, each show how quickly life can come at you.
The ties that grind
The top prospects and showcase ponies of the modern era are usually bred in the Sun Belt, where high school ball starts in February, rainouts are infrequent and exposure is high.
This was not the life Trout and McGonigle lived.
An area scout had to convince the Angels to spend the 25th pick on Trout in 2009. McGonigle played tons of ball growing up, of course, but he says it was the buddies around him, not the reps, that made him who he is.
Trout has noticed the shared traits.
“He’s a stud,” says Trout of McGonigle. “I think being from the East Coast, we’re not playing year-round like the guys in Florida and Texas. I think that has something to do with it.
“You look at high schools, now they’re playing a lot of games. I just found out there’s kids in California that don’t even really go to school. They’re just home schooled and straight play baseball.
“That’s extreme to me. I went to class every day. After school day, had lunch and played games. It was a lot different.”
McGonigle comes from an almost entirely different baseball generation. But he can relate.
When he landed in Philly on Sunday after the Tigers finished the first half in Detroit, he was picked up at the airport by a friend and headed straight to Michael Anderson’s house.
McGonigle and Anderson are thick as thieves, and this was a big weekend. Not only was McGonigle arriving a conquering hero, but Anderson, who went on to play baseball at Penn State, was drafted that day, fifth round, Texas Rangers.
“I gave him a big hug,” says McGonigle. “He’s a big part of why I’m here today, the way we pushed ourselves growing up. To see him get drafted after everything he’s been through, is truly an inspiration to me.
“Hanging out and getting better with him was the biggest thing, growing up.”
It wasn’t just structured ball, but silly competitions: Whiffle ball, bike rides, or simply racing each other back to the car on the frequent occasions Anderson’s mother, Ellen – “She’s like a second mom to me,” says McGonigle – gave him a lift to a baseball game.
Now the dream is to “share a field one day” in the big leagues, says McGonigle.
They’re all part of the fabric that makes up Delaware County, a land just west of Philly proper that’s taken on a sense of place and pride all its own.
Former Phillie Mickey Morandini cuts promo adds for Delco, whose credo is that it’s “not just a location, it’s a lifestyle.” One of its unincorporated communities is Wawa, the actual home of the gas and convenience store synonymous with Philly.
The Delco flag can be spotted on tents and easy-ups dotting the Jersey shore; one ambitious tattoo artist, Roddie Cooper, once hoisted the flag in triumph at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, saying he had to “rep Delco for the rest of the world.”
Bryce Harper can relate. He and many Phillies have a T-shirt with the words “Clearwooder” on them, or how a Delco accent might pronounce the name of their Florida spring training site.
Harper’s a Philly guy going on seven seasons now and appreciates where the region's favorite sons came from.
“McGonigle,” says Harper, “has had a great career thus far. I said it the other day: I wish he was a Phillie just because he was from here and everything else. But he’s an amazing player.
“The other day, I asked him, ‘Where were you at in (the) ’22 (World Series)? You were in high school, still?’
"He said 'yeah, we were up in the stands yelling at all the other people for you.'"
It is something of a rite of passage. Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz, also a first-time All-Star, hails from Lancaster County, about 75 miles away, earning him the “Big Amish” nickname from teammates. But he considers himself a Philly bro, growing up going to a bevy of Phillies games, the most memorable a 2008 NL Division Series battle against Milwaukee.
“I was young,” says Kurtz, who was 5 years old at the time. “CC Sabathia was pitching against the Phillies, and the whole crowd was chanting, ‘CC sucks!’ and I started chanting it.
“And my dad said, ‘This is a bad word.’ That’s a moment I’ve come to remember right away.”
Now 6-5 and 240 pounds, Kurtz was a baseball prodigy, on the Team USA pipeline as a youngster and he eventually attended boarding school in Tennessee to get more ball in. But he knows the kind of player it takes to get out of Philly and its surrounding environs.
“You gotta be grindy,” he says. “There’s bad weather, you don’t know what you’re getting that day. It’s kind of part of who we are growing up here.
“It’s not a clean, nice city. It’s gritty and grindy and that’s the reasons you love it.”
McGonigle attended a parochial school in Delaware County, playing in a league where there was “a lot of trash talking, a lot of stuff like that, but that’s what made it fun.”
With 99 hits in 93 games for the Tigers, along with an .812 OPS and an absurd 4.7 WAR, McGonigle, an infielder, can work out with whomever and wherever he wants. Yet for now, he still stays on his grind in the area, and believes there’s something in the, um, wooder where he grew up.
“I think the East Coast guys, with the winter, being stuck inside training – I think it helped me,” he says. “It gave me a little more edge to get better, surrounding myself with the right group of guys from this area – Delaware County area. Blue collar as everyone knows.
“It took me a lot to get to where I am today. And Delco helped me a lot.”
An appointment at the Bank
Trout grew up on the Jersey side of things, coached by his dad Jeff, a minor leaguer from Millville who raised his family there. While Harper was the anointed superstar from the time he was 16, Trout was a bolt out of the Mid-Atlantic, debuting at 19 like Harper.
They played in their first All-Star Games in 2012, several children and a few baseball lifetimes ago.
“I love Mike, man. We played Fall League together, became friends. It’s great to see him back and healthy,” says Harper of Trout, who has avoided serious injury but recovered from a hamstring hiccup to make the AL squad. “We all pull for him in the league, because we know how talented he is, and how good he is.
“So anytime he’s able to get on a national stage – he’ll probably go deep tomorrow, I’d imagine, because that’s who he is – and it’s a lot of fun to see a guy like that be able to do it in his hometown of Philly.”
McGonigle was 8 years old when Trout made his first All-Star Game. This week, they will share a clubhouse, and McGonigle has not forgotten the example Trout long ago provided.
“Seeing that inspired me to get better each day,” says McGonigle. “The work ethic he puts in and being from this area is really cool.”
He has already passed the torch in some ways. During Trout’s early, electric years with the Angels, fans from Millville and surrounding areas would invade nearby ballparks, largely Baltimore’s Camden Yards and Citizens Bank for the rare Angels appearance in Philadelphia.
The Trout 27s would be impossible to miss.
Now, it is McGonigle’s No. 7 that could be seen in the seats of Camden Yards or on the streets and nearby pubs surrounding the stadium. Life goes on.
Trout said scoring 20 All-Star tickets is “a lot,” given that other players will almost certainly use their allotment. In a sense, it’s fortuitous this date in Philly and Trout’s health and performance – he has 18 homers and an .863 OPS – aligned.
“I know a lot of people that are coming,” he said. “It’s been on the calendar a while.”
Not so much for McGonigle. He debuted with three hits on Opening Day and has only turbocharged his rookie season since. Suddenly, the hometown All-Star Game was on the horizon and then an almost certainty.
Now, the kid who idolized Chase Utley will take to his infield grass, surrounded by the greatest players in the world, a group he now counts as peers.
“First game in the Bank is gonna be an All-Star Game?” he asks.
“Surreal, man.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Generations apart, All-Stars Mike Trout, Kevin McGonigle epitomize Philly
