Baseball
Favorite athlete: Joel Embiid
Favorite team: Philadelphia 76ers (all Philly teams)
Favorite memory competing in sports: Playing 5 games in one day at the Aberdeen tournament in 11U.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: “During one practice we were throwing bullpens, and on the first three throws, I fell three times in a row because the dirt was really loose and I slid.”
Music on playlist: Wide variety all the way from Drake and Lil Uzi to Morgan Wallen and Florida Georgia Line
Future plans: Major in nursing at East Stroudsburg
Favorite motto or words to live by: “Trust the Process.”
One goal before you turn 30: Make a million dollars or more.
One thing people don’t know about you: I enjoy investing and the stock market.
By Mary Jane Souder
Doing what’s best for the team.
It’s a nice idea. At least it sounds like one until it requires sacrifice. Then, quite often it’s another story entirely.
Tyler Evangelisto gets it. Plain and simple.
The North Penn senior is passionate about baseball, but he’s never really had his moment in the spotlight. As a matter of fact, he’s seen limited varsity playing time. This after getting cut as a sophomore and playing jayvee as a junior. Last year he gave up his natural position – catcher – since the team had a surplus of catchers to try his hand at pitching.
And yes, if given a choice, Evangelisto would love to see more playing time, but he sees the bigger picture.
“I’ve always had that kind of mentality of whatever helps the team win,” Evangelisto said. “I’m a pitcher – they call on me when they need me if they need me at all, and if not, I can find other ways to help.
“If that is keeping the stats and talking game plan because I know it’s always good to hear something strategy-wise not from a coach but from another player – how a pitcher is sequencing his pitches and stuff like that.”
Evangelisto follows MLB, tracking players’ stats.
“Players who are getting hot and going on hitting streaks or pitchers that are shutting everybody down to see how they’re pitching in their games and everything like that,” he said.
Although his interest in stats might suggest otherwise, Evangelisto is not a numbers person, but he is a baseball guy.
“He has a chart in his hand every game,” NP coach Kevin Manero said. “He has worked in every way he possibly could to find some role on the team, and he is having success in a really important role.
“Now we’re in the most important part of the season, and I count on him. I know he’s a guy in the dugout that’s going to help us with some of the off-the-field duties that we can’t live without.”
Baseball in his blood
Evangelisto can’t remember a time when baseball was not part of his life.
“My brother (Trey) grew up playing football and baseball, my dad grew up playing football and baseball too, so we were predisposed to it a lot,” he said. “My sister played sports – she was a cheerleader and gymnast, so we all did everything we could.”
Also, Tyler’s grandfather, Jim Evangelisto, was a well-known umpire in the area, so it was hardly a surprise that Tyler began playing baseball when he was four years old.
“I can’t really say there was pressure to like baseball,” he said. “Growing up I watched a lot of Phillies games. I can’t say I remember the World Series of ’08 because I was only four or five years old.
“I definitely remember talking a lot about it. My dad brought home shirts – ‘Oh, we won the National League,’ and ‘Now we won the World Series.’ I just didn’t comprehend it at the time.”
Football entered the picture when he was six. He even played soccer a year and added basketball to his resume in middle school.
He stayed involved in football and baseball in high school, but after losing his freshman baseball season to COVID (he had earned a spot on the jayvee), he found himself dealing with health issues the following year.
“I had an appendicitis two weeks before baseball tryouts, so I wasn’t fully recovered to try out sophomore year,” Evangelisto said. “I wasn’t healthy enough to try out, but I was ready enough that I could move without a ton of pain so I tried out. But I definitely was not anywhere near where I would have been if I was completely healthy.”
Evangelisto did not make the cut and began questioning the direction his athletic career was heading.
“There were definitely a lot of different thoughts going through my head because that appendicitis happened in March, which is right before tryouts,” he said. “But I had lingering effects until the summer, and that’s ultimately what made me lose a lot of weight and quit football beginning of junior year.
“When I quit football, I was like – ‘All right, I can either do nothing, or I can go play baseball and lock in on one sport,’ so I decided to play fall baseball that year and really get back into the swing of things and get ahead of the ball before going into junior year and trying out for the team.”
When tryouts for baseball rolled around junior year, Evangelisto – a catcher most of his baseball career – opted to change positions.
“It’s going with what the team needs,” he said. “We had a lot of catchers trying out, and I saw we were very strong at catcher, so I became a pitcher, thinking I’ve got a strong arm from throwing a lot as a catcher, so I’ll try to help being a pitcher.”
After playing jayvee as a junior, Evangelisto earned a spot on the varsity this spring and had his best stint on the mound in the Knights’ Senior Night game against Spring-Ford.
“He pitched great against Spring-Ford,” Manero said. “Basically, he’s a bullpen guy, he helps us in the intersquad games by throwing some innings. He’s got a chart in his hand and is always doing something to help.”
Although his playing time has been limited for a North Penn squad that captured the SOL Colonial Division crown and is bound for the state tournament, he wouldn’t have wanted to miss the experience.
“This year has been unimaginable,” Evangelisto said. “It’s been a complete 180-degree turnaround from last year (when the Knights were 6-10).
“I’m not even going to lie – coming into this year, I was not expecting this. I thought we would be a .500 middle of the pack team, fighting for a playoff spot, everything like that. I thought it was going to be a slow climb from our insane falloff last year. We have a really young core – it’s going to be remarkable to see what they do in the coming years.”
Overcoming some tough stuff
Health issues are nothing new to Evangelisto, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on Nov. 5, 2013, when he was just eight years old.
“I went to my grandmother’s house for a family dinner with my mom’s sister who also has diabetes,” he said of his aunt Kimmy, who has been by his side to guide him. “I told her in the car I felt really thirsty and lethargic, and she told me just to stick it out, so when we got there, I asked for water and immediately drank like three glasses, and my aunt was like, ‘That’s not very normal,’ so she decided to check my sugar. The meter read ‘high’ which meant my blood sugar was over 500 when a normal range is 90-120, so the next morning I went to the doctor, and they sent me to CHOP.”
And so began Evangelisto’s journey with diabetes.
“I got diagnosed the same time as 4-6 other kids when I was in the hospital, so all these other kids were in the exact same boat as me,” he said. “They were teaching us about – this is how you count carbs, this is how you set up your insulin, and I was the only one of the kids that was mentally ready or healthy enough to go to those classes.
“I picked it up like it was nothing. I was doing better than the parents. The parents were like – ‘What’s up with this kid? How does he know this stuff so fast?’ I learned – ‘Look, I’m not dying, but I’m going to have to live with this. I can be in denial, or I can take the bull by the horns and just keep going.’”
Evangelisto chose the latter and said it’s the unpredictability that’s the toughest part.
“I guarantee you coach Manero would agree with me on that one,” he said. “It happened a lot in the offseason because our morning workouts are at 5 a.m.
“Obviously, with diabetes, you try to stay on a schedule. You’re eating a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner just so you know what insulin is in you at what time. Waking up at 5 in the morning just really throws a wrench into that.
“(Manero) could tell you – there’d be times I’d be going to them, I’d not be going to them. It was hard for me to prove to him, ‘I’m all in on this, but I physically can’t do this.’ That definitely caused problems, but it was something I tried to push through. Especially being a jayvee guy coming up trying to make a spot on varsity for yourself even knowing if you’re not going to get that many innings or whatever. It’s just the uncertainty.”
Evangelisto’s commitment was not lost on his coach.
“It was tough for him in the winter,” Manero said. “It’s something he’s been battling. There’s no question, he’s got a strong arm, so we started getting a look at him as a pitcher. He still was never able to crack the starting lineup or get into the top tier of the depth chart in his position, but he competed, and he always kept coming back, he always kept working hard, and his attitude was always really good. I always want to find a way to keep really great people in our program as long as possible.
“He’s a hard worker who spent a lot of time with us in the weight room and always was eager to have opportunities. For example, when we do our indoor workouts, we don’t have every single pitcher in our program coming to throw bullpens because we never would be able to get through everybody so we have depth-chart-wise certain guys throw bullpens and certain guys don’t, and he would always ask – ‘If there’s an opportunity, I’d like to come down and throw,’ so he always wanted the chance to get better and always wanted instruction, so when you see a kid like that who really wants to learn and wants to have an opportunity and he’s a great kid, you find a place any way you can, and that’s how he ended up on our roster.”
Looking ahead
Competing in sports at the collegiate level is not part of Evangelisto’s future. This fall, he will be attending East Stroudsburg University where he will follow in the footsteps of his sister, Alyssa, and major in nursing.
“She made me interested in that,” he said. “I can’t say I originally thought I would go in the medical field because it’s always been in the back of my mind – I’ve already got diabetes, I’ve been in and out of the hospital a few times so I know a little bit of what’s going on, but I didn’t know if it would be enough to get my foot in the door.
“Originally, I wanted to be an engineer, and then I realized I’m not smart enough for that. My brother is going to Widener for biomedical engineering, and the stuff he does is just remarkable. It’s crazy.”
It was during the COVID pandemic that the idea of pursuing a career in nursing first arose.
“My sister was testing me on some of the things they were learning and situational assessments, and I got better scores than some of the people in her classes just from knowing stuff from being in and out of the hospital with diabetes,” he said. “She was like – ‘Why don’t you become a nurse if you know this stuff already?’
“If they have a rec baseball team (at ESU), I might consider it, but I know the nursing program is very rigorous.”
That’s not to say baseball will not be part of Evangelisto’s future.
“My brother is talking about getting into playing in a rec league, and we have family members that play, so I’ll definitely consider playing in one of those leagues if not even coach if or when I have kids,” he said.
Evangelisto acknowledged that being part of the Knights’ baseball program was significant.
“It’s added a ton to my high school experience,” he said. “Baseball for me – it speeds up the end of the year because usually at the end of the year you kind of start to drag a little bit. Your grades start to fall behind, but when you have baseball – if you’re ineligible, you can’t play baseball.
“It really just kind of keeps me in line a little bit, and overall, it just makes me happier knowing that once I get out of school, I can go spend time with my buddies and decompress a little bit. Nothing else matters on the baseball field because you’re having fun.”
For Manero, who has known Evangelisto since he was a youngster, this is an example of the baseball world coming full circle.
“It’s a baseball family, they’ve been on the playing field their entire life,” the Knights’ coach said. “His family (parents Jim and Christine) – they are the nicest people in the world. Never complain about anything. He’s one of those guys – he helps us so much with the charts and things like that. He takes great pride in the fact that he’s good at that.
“It’s a good story of a kid who isn’t a superstar, but all the way up to the end of his high school days, he’s out there on the field doing whatever he can. His dad comes to all the games whether he’s playing or not. Who knows how much baseball he has left after this season, but for now he’s making the most of every minute and we’re better for it.”
