Monroeville baseball team lets Gateway grads stay in game

By: Michael Love
Sunday, June 18, 2023 | 11:01 AM

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Donovan Baxter is feeling a wave of redemption this summer as a manager and player for the Monroeville Red Pandas in the Pittsburgh North American Baseball Association.

He and a number of his Gateway classmates were denied their senior seasons in 2020 when the covid pandemic shut down all spring high school sports.

Baxter then joined the baseball program at Saint Vincent, but a shoulder injury as a Bearcats freshman ended his time in the collegiate ranks.

“I had to step away after my freshman year. That was tough,” Baxter said. “Now, it is just a lot of fun to get out there with a number of my former Gateway teammates and others who played at Gateway over the past several years. I thought my baseball career was over, but this is a great way to still play the game I grew up loving.”

The Red Pandas, an expansion team in AAA, the highest division in Pittsburgh NABA, returns a Monroeville-based team to the league after the Monroeville Cardinals ended their two-year run in 2021.

The team is made up almost entirely of Gateway graduates, except for West Allegheny grads Matt and Zach Lockwich, teammates with Baxter at Saint Vincent.

“Having that itch to play again, I contacted some of the Gateway guys about putting this team together,” Baxter said. “We have a few guys still playing in college, but a lot of us were done playing and were missing the game. We all felt we were still young enough and not too far removed from the game. Before we get too settled into our jobs and our families, we wanted to see about playing together one last time.”

The team’s Gateway infusion includes seven members of the 2020 senior class — Baxter, Anthony Cammuso, Sonny Comunale, Ethan Birckbichler, Jaired Lehman, Jordan Stancovich and Dalton Vojnik.

Other former Gateway players on the team include Patrick Baxter, Marc and Troy Caggiano, Tony Castalano, Kris Dick, Ethan Frenchik, Luke Jackson, Caleb Lehman, Julian Santana, Joe Schulte, Justin Stancovich, Jim Torcasio and Dylan and Mike Vojnik.

Baxter said all of the team members try their best to make as many games as possible, but work and other commitments have limited those chances in some cases.

“This league is relaxed, in a sense, but at the same time, it is pretty competitive, and we like that,” Baxter said. “We see a ton of great pitching — even better, a lot of times, than we saw in high school. It is a true team effort each game. Everyone has contributed as much as they’ve been able.”

As for the Red Pandas nickname?

“I believe it was Jordan and Dalton who finalized it,” Baxter said. “We were all in agreement that we wanted to be something different since we just wore black and white jerseys our whole lives. So, we wanted some color. They pitched the Red Pandas idea. Red Pandas are an endangered species, and there’s not too many teams out there like us, either. That was a quote from Dalton, and it just stuck after that.”

The Red Pandas were 5-7 overall, four games and eight points back of the AAA leader, after a 10-5 victory over West End-Elliot on June 14.

Monroeville and West End-Elliot are next to each other in the middle of the AAA standings.

The game saw Monroeville rally from a five-run deficit after three innings. It scored five times in the fourth, once in the sixth and four more times in the seventh.

Monroeville batters combined for 11 hits. Comunale had a big game with two hits in four at-bats with a pair of doubles and four runs batted in.

Dalton Vojnik and Schulte each added a pair of RBIs, while Jackson and Dylan Vojnik drove in one run apiece.

Dalton Vojnik started on the mound for the Red Pandas, and Jaired Lehman came on in relief to get the win.

“We just have a good group of guys who are enjoying being together again,” Comunale said. “We are showing that we have what it takes to be a pretty competitive team. Our first game was like the first Monday (May 15) after a lot of us got back from school. We pretty much went right into it. It was a shaky first couple of games, but we’re getting in a groove.”

This season also is the first opportunity for the team members to play on the renovated Gateway High School field with the newly installed field turf and other upgrades completed earlier this year.

“We had been hearing for years that we would be getting turf, but it never came,” Baxter said. “It’s just great that we now are able to play on the turf on the same field we played on in high school.”

Monroeville is scheduled to return to action at 8 p.m. June 22 against CSI at John Herb Field off McKnight Road in Ross Township. The regular season is slated to conclude the week of July 10.

“We’re having a blast, and we hope to keep this going and keep this team together for as long as possible,” Baxter said.

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.