If it’s true that there’s no crying in baseball, then Anthony Paneto may have found the only time tears are fitting — standing on the diamond after his high school baseball career had come to an end.

“It was very, very difficult. (Lake Catholic) got up 3-0 from mental mistakes and not being able to come back, it was very sad. At the end of the game it hit me, it was my last high school game I was going to play,” the Jefferson catcher said. “I went up to my pitcher, Andy Saksa, and he started crying, I started crying.”

Those tears, though, were enough to confirm what Paneto’s coach, Scott Barber, was already thinking — the catcher still had more outs to go before his career was truly over.

“The reason I know he’s going to be successful in college was by his reaction to his last game in high school,” Barber said. “You could see his passion for the game, that he didn’t want it to be over.”

If everything goes according to plan, Paneto will have at least four more years.

The son of Lori Zebransky and Felix Paneto will pack up his gear and head to Alliance as one of the newest members of the Mount Union baseball team.

“I’m excited to move down and play college ball. But I’m nervous about how I’m going to do in school,” said Paneto, who will room with fellow Purple Raider and former Geneva pitcher Matt Freeman. “It’s both nervous and excitement.”

After a breakout offensive year that saw Paneto hit .338 with six doubles and one home run for Jefferson, the catcher had options for his baseball future. He looked at Marietta College, Ohio Wesleyan University and Thiel College.

But it was Mount Union that proved to be just what he was looking for.

“They look like a very good school, mostly just for my education, and they have above a .500 winning average,” Paneto, who is looking to double major in physical education and health, said. “It’s a good place for me to go, a good baseball atmosphere and good education also.

“I don’t want to go to like the No. 1 best baseball school. That’s not where my goal was. My goal was to get a good education and have a good time playing baseball. Mount gave me what I wanted.”

The Purple Raiders went 20-18 in their 2008 campaign, including an 11-7 mark in the Ohio Athletic Conference.

But if Paneto’s history shows one thing, it’s that he’ll do everything in his power to help Mount Union improve upon this mark.

“He’s a kid that will stay there and take extra repetitions in the cage. He always wants to work on his throwing and his defensive skills beyond what’s regularly called for,” Barber said. “That’s what it takes to play at the college level.”

It was that extra time in the cages, and a little mental shift, that led to Paneto’s offensive renaissance.