By Jay Sorgi • Posted July 13, 2026

He hit nearly .500 as a member of the Msgr. Bonner & Archbishop Prendergast High School Friars baseball team that won a Philadelphia Catholic League (PCL) championship.

He and his teammates helped individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities feel the joy of hitting a ball, and encountered countless baseball-loving kids with conversation and hugs.

Kevin McGonigle has come back to Philadelphia for arguably the biggest baseball game of his life so far. The Detroit Tigers rookie who is tearing up the American League will represent the Tigers as a reserve infielder in Tuesday night’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia.

He’ll also be representing the Friars, the PCL and his family in the way that he lives his Catholic faith.

“Just so down to earth, and he’s never changed,” said Bonner & Prendie Athletic Director Pat Devenney, who met McGonigle as a PCL baseball coordinator and also coached against him at SS. John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School before moving to his current role.

“One of the nicest kids you’ll ever meet. [He’s] now a young man.”

Bonner & Prendie President John Cooke said McGonigle “doesn’t forget his roots. “Faith, family, friends, community values — they’re all the ingredients to the recipe at Bonner & Prendie, and I think he espouses that.”

Baseball statheads will cite McGonigle’s numbers for the start of his 2026 rookie season as being among the best in the sport for a shortstop.

The young man born in Media and raised in Aldan Borough, Delaware County, ranks first in the American League in the Wins Above Replacement statistical measure of a player’s value, at 4.7 WAR, while standing in the top 10 in many other major categories.

Devenney saw countless examples of that when coaching in PCL playoff games against McGonigle during his championship-laden career at Bonner & Prendie.

“He comes to the plate against a pitcher throwing 85, 90 miles per hour that ended up committing to Monmouth [University Baseball.] He smokes a triple, (and) the whole team just rallied around that,” Devenney said, comparing him to Phillies legend Chase Utley.

“On the field, it was just different. You could just tell it was different. And he handled himself so well. He handled himself like a true captain.”

There aren’t stats to quantify what Cooke says is the powerful combination of mental toughness on the field and genuine humanity.

Cooke said that to see McGonigle’s Catholic faith shine, one can look at all the times he has used baseball to encounter others, especially children.

“He made the time to go up and talk to little kids. He signed their baseballs or their hats. I remember specifically, he got down to their level. He would get down on a knee and be at a little kid’s level, talk to them one-on-one, answer questions, sign the kid’s baseball or give him a hug,” Cooke said.

“That’s love right there. That really demonstrates what we’re all about, caring for others.”

The 2023 Bonner & Prendie graduate, a draft pick of the Tigers that year, also gave $40,000 through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit program one year later to help other young people experience a Catholic education.

McGonigle has long extended that love farther beyond Bonner & Prendie’s own fields of competition.

He and his teammates regularly took time for community projects. The Challenger League at the Communities of Don Guanella and Divine Providence stands out as a blessed merger between the game he loves and the sense of service grounded in the faith that his parents, including his mother Tracy who graduated from Prendie, gave him.

“Even in season, they’d go over with the Challenger League and play, and I know Kevin was a part of that,” Cooke said. “The 2022 championship team, they were very involved with that. They’ve kind of continued that stewardship.”

Bonner & Prendie organized a group of dozens of the Drexel Hill-based high school’s community to go to Yankee Stadium in New York and wear Bonner & Prendie’s Kelly green to see McGonigle’s Tigers play against the Yankees.

“He came out and welcomed our group that came up to Yankee Stadium,” Cooke said. “I’ve seen pictures throughout the season of different alumni and coaches going to see him, that he makes the time to meet with them and talk to them.”

The Phillies and Tigers ironically battled this past weekend in the Motor City, with the Phillies winning the series two games to one. The Tigers won’t be playing in Philly again until the 2027 season, unless both somehow make it to this year’s World Series.

Yet Cooke and Devenney say that McGonigle regularly makes it a point to come back to Bonner & Prendie, working out with their baseball team, watching football games, and making community impacts while doing it.

This trip, from the childhood bedroom where he’ll reportedly be sleeping Monday night to the dirt at shortstop at “the Bank” against the world’s best baseball players on Tuesday, will be much more special than the regular homecoming.

“His interactions are genuine and it’s the truth. It’s not a facade,” Cooke said. “He remembers where he came from.”