ALDAN, Pa. — At the June 3 city council meeting in Upper Darby, Pa., a woman named Joanne Nammavong rose from her seat, walked to a podium and addressed the council. There were three things she wanted to discuss.
Trash pickup was first on the docket.
“I really would like someone to come look at my street, because what’s on my street is slippery, it’s black,” she said. “I think the trash trucks are leaking oil onto my street. It’s also trash juice.”
Then she talked about upcoming zoning decisions in her township. She accused council members of looking out for their own careers, not representing the people they serve.
“If you do that,” she said of one zoning measure, “then this township is shot.”
After roasting the council for the better part of a pointed two minutes, Nammavong transitioned into her third topic. She wanted to end on a positive.
“The last thing I want to say is Major League Baseball All-Star voting has started,” she said. “You can vote five times a day. Our local kid, Kevin McGonigle, is on the ballot (as) a shortstop for the Detroit Tigers.”
In a loud, hurried tone, she reiterated the point.
“Please vote every day for Kevin McGonigle, five times.”
Then Nammavong walked away, McGonigle’s All-Star candidacy her mic drop. In the back of the room, a few people clapped.
Nammavong, it turns out, has never met Kevin McGonigle. She does not know the family. She is not even from the same town. But they are both residents of Delaware County, an area just west of Philadelphia with a cultural identity so distinct it can feel like its own world.
This is the place that molded McGonigle and helped produce the grit-filled, hard-nosed way he plays. As a 21-year-old rookie with the Tigers, McGonigle is hitting .282 with seven home runs. He’s a native of Aldan, Pa., who can hit, run and field. His 4.4 bWAR ranks third among all MLB position players.
McGonigle has already established himself as a Tigers cornerstone for years to come, the recipient of an eight-year, $150 million contract extension. After Saturday’s All-Star roster reveal, he became only the third Tiger to make an All-Star Game at age 21 or younger. The others are Mark Fidrych and Al Kaline.
This week, McGonigle’s Tigers play the Phillies in Detroit. The location of this year’s All-Star Game?
Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
Kevin McGonigle has lived up to the hype in his rookie season. (Tim Warner / Getty Images)
“There’s a lot of negative things people could say about Delaware County,” Nammavong said in a phone conversation a few weeks after her stump speech. “Sports are a great way to bring people together.”
One day inside the Detroit Tigers clubhouse, McGonigle stopped near his locker and watched the video of Nammavong’s monologue. He laughed and wanted it sent to his phone so he could share with his mother.
A few days later, when his father, Kevin George McGonigle, saw the video, he texted back simply: “DELCO.”
Delaware County is the fifth-most populous county in Pennsylvania despite being the third-smallest in land mass.
This place was first settled under Swedish rule way back in 1643. By 1681, England’s King Charles II sent William Penn to start a proprietary colony. That next year, near the banks of the Delaware River, the Old Chester Court House was founded. It is now the oldest public building in the U.S.
Today Delaware County spans 184 square miles and contains 49 different municipalities. Until a recent swing, Republican politics ruled county elections since the Civil War. Presidential elections have gone blue since 1992. It is a place with deep Irish Catholic and Italian roots.
Ask anyone around about Delco, and they start with a similar list of adjectives.
“Very blue collar,” Kevin McGonigle said.
“A very tight community,” his mother, Tracy, said.
Said his father, Kevin George: “A lot of tough-ass people in Delco.”
Drive through Delaware County, and you’ll know precisely where you are. At YO! Coffee Drive-Thru in Media, a billboard reads, “We love Delco a Latte.” There are places named after, well, the place. There’s Delco Diner in Primos and Delco Kup, a dive in Springfield.
At a boutique shop called Three Potato Four in Media — home to the hospital where McGonigle was born — they sell Delco pennants and Delco stickers and even a Delco air freshener. A green postcard features a map of the county, dotted with local delicacies and hotspots like Wawa headquarters, Charlie’s Hamburgers and Ro-Lynn Deli.
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: “A place that embodies a down-to-earth and authentic way of life.”
Delco has become a brand. People wear it on T-shirts and hats. It’s also enough to worry a few who grew up around here, those who stomped across the county’s streets and drank at its bars long before anyone regularly called it “Delco.” They don’t want the gift-shop schtick. They don’t want to cheapen the character.
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’s 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’s Chester, an actual city.
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 — the Aldan Memorial Legion Post —is right next to the Little League field.
“There are a lot of bars,” Kevin McGonigle said, “that are sketchy.”
“To me,” Kevin George said, “That’s Delco.”
At Mary’s 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.
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.
Kevin McGonigle grew up attending Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park. Now he’ll play in an All-Star Game there. (Courtesy of Kevin George McGonigle)
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.
“There’s a lot of trash talking,” McGonigle said.
His two closest friends were Michael Anderson and Joey DeMucci. They grew up playing sports, popping wheelies and fishing in creeks. “Running around Delaware County with our heads on fire,” McGonigle said this year on the “Have a Seat” podcast.
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 “water” like “wooder”?
“People know Delco,” DeMucci said. “You say, ‘Oh, where are you from?’ and you say, ‘Delco,’ they kind of laugh at you, like, ‘Oh my gosh.”
It’s Wednesday at noon when Kevin George McGonigle walks into Johnny B’s in Drexel Hill. He steps to the bar, orders a drink and a cheesesteak.
“What time is the game today?” the bartender asks.
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’s changed this year because of Kevin McGonigle. Once a diehard Phillies fan, Walsh is now locked in on the Tigers. He’s collecting baseball cards again.
“He brought me back into the game big time,” Walsh says.
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’s 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.
“The Phillies were stinking up the joint,” McCormack said. “I was like, ‘That’s not a bad idea.’”
Now they’re 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.
“We do have some McGonigle shirts, yes,” she says. “What size are you looking for?”
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’s family business.
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’re from Delco Springfield.
“Somebody said you’re either mated, dated or related,” he said. “It hits a little too close. Everybody from Springfield meets somebody from Springfield, then marries somebody from Springfield, then eventually moves back to Springfield.”
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.
Ever since spring training, she has been getting stopped at the grocery store. Her phone gets a near-constant barrage of congratulatory texts.
“We’re blessed,” she had said, “with a lot of good people in the community.”
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.
The morning of a series finale against the Yankees, almost 50 people met up at McGonigle’s 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’s name on the back.
“He’s not a kid anymore. But to me, he is,” Tracy said. “I miss him terribly when he’s not here.”
Although many of McGonigle’s 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.
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’s age.
All around Aldan, there are reminders of the distance between where he’s from and where he is now.
Kevin McGonigle was the local prodigy, the kid everyone knew was built differently than the rest.
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, “Man, he’d be our starting shortstop right now, as a seventh-grader, on our varsity team.”
Bold as his talent was, McGonigle wouldn’t 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.
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’s side went to either Bonner or Prendie.
“He is literally the nicest kid ever,” DeBarberie said. “But he’s 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’ll get in your face and he’ll chew you out a little bit.”
McGonigle wasn’t one of those wunderkind travel-ball kids decked out in colorful gear and necklaces. He didn’t have highly paid private hitting instructors. He instead drilled with his father, swinging day after day in a cage set up in a friend’s 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.
“My dad,” McGonigle said, “is the definition of a Delco dad.”
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)
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.
“Where he’s from, that area, those kids are just tough,” Auburn coach Butch Thompson said. “There was an early toughness, an early confidence, an early grit. All those words we overuse, but it was real with him.”
In 2023, McGonigle was drafted at No. 37 overall and forwent his Auburn commitment to sign with the Detroit Tigers.
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’s No. 6 overall prospect).
“I was so pissed off,” DeBarberie said. “They could have had him at 27. I was just like, ‘What are we doing?’ Last year, even when he’s in High A and Double A, I’m telling people, ‘He’s better than Bryson Stott right now.’”
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’s western edges. A whiteboard in the facility contains the message: Do something hard.
His coach is Alex Kramer, a Jersey native who coached at a handful of different colleges in the area.
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’s come to understand what makes Delco distinct.
“It’s so funny hearing a 9- or 10-year-old kid with a thick Delco accent,” he said.
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.
This is something Kramer sees in his prize pupil.
“Whatever you see is exactly who and what Kevin McGonigle is,” he said.
After the cheesesteak, Kevin George ends up back at Mary’s, only a few blocks from the small, two-story home where McGonigle was raised. Mary’s is a small brick building. A dimly lit dive where 50 people feels like a packed house.
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’s 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 ’80s. It’s still a sore subject.
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.
There was a time, though, after he and Tracy divorced, when Kevin George was between jobs. He said he would visit places like Mary’s, Tony’s in Collingdale and Red Lantern Tavern in Glenolden, selling chance raffles and other fundraisers to help pay for Kevin’s travel ball.
Locals now line the bar at Mary’s, supporting the family in a different way. One of them is Bill Coppock. He’s 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.
Coppock is a Philadelphia union carpenter. Bright green shirt, sweat-stained bandana under his hat. He bought his house in Collingdale because it’s four blocks from the bar Tony’s, the place, he said, “where I’ve spent more time than anywhere else on the entire planet.”
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.
“It’s not a place,” the magnet reads. “It’s a lifestyle.”
It wasn’t so long ago Kevin George was scraping together money from these bars, helping fuel a dream he and his son shared. Now he’s 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.
McGonigle is becoming one of Delco’s 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’s reality.
“I think a lot of people from the area, whatever job they’re doing, they work very hard at it,” McGonigle said. “They never give up.”
On a Tigers telecast hours before Saturday’s roster reveal, broadcast Jason Benetti talked about McGonigle’s All-Star candidacy and what it would mean for the place that raised him.
“Imagine,” he said, “the party in Delaware County.”
