Phillies batboy Adam Crognale beat childhood cancer. Now he spreads positivity in the dugout.

Adam Crognale used crutches to move from his hospital bed to the window while his mother rolled his IV pole. He was diagnosed two months earlier with lymphoma, forcing him to stay at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for weeklong chemotherapy treatments.

The cancer robbed Crognale of his summer in 2014 as the 15-year-old cycled in and out of the hospital. He lost his long brown hair and watched steroids puff his face, and he couldn’t go to Phillies games.

But Crognale refused to let the cancer stop him that July from going to the window and watching fireworks erupt over the ballpark across town.

“We could actually see them,” he said. “It’s not where you want to see them from, but we could.”

It is moments like that — “We smashed our faces up against the window so we could see the fireworks,” Crognale’s mother said — that make everything now feel a bit surreal.

Crognale, 25 years old and cancer free, is in his fourth season as the Phillies’ batboy. He started working for the team in 2019, hawking 50-50 charity tickets in the seating bowl while studying journalism at Temple. Two years later, he was in the dugout with Bryce Harper.

Crognale, with a chemotherapy port in his chest, trained himself that summer in the hospital to be nocturnal. There were better options — mostly baseball and sitcoms — on TV at night. He went to CHOP on Monday morning, stayed all week for chemo, went home for a few days, and did it all again while watching the Phils every night.

“The Phillies really got me through it,” Crognale said.

Crognale already had a positive disposition, but his summer with cancer emboldened that outlook. All they could do, his mother said, was stay positive and trust the doctors. The cancer had a strong survival rate, but the summer was still difficult. Positivity and some baseball kept Crognale going.

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That experience, Crognale said, taught him that “every day can’t be taken for granted.” So he made it his mission to spread positivity everywhere he went, from the halls of Cherry Hill East High to the journalism classes at Temple, and now to the Phillies dugout.

“Baseball is a grind,” said Phil Sheridan, the team’s manager of clubhouse services. “It can wear people down. But he’s always positive. He’s a fan, but he’s not a fan. He hates when we lose and he loves when we win. He’s excited by it. He enjoys being a part of it. He doesn’t get a big head from it, but he loves to be a part of it in a way that most people never will.”

Kyle Schwarber broke his bat last October on a foul ball in Arizona, sending the slugger back toward the dugout in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. Crognale was ready.

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“He gives me the new bat and I said, ‘Is this the one?’ He goes ‘Yep,’ ” Schwarber said. “Then I hit a homer. He’s going, ‘I told you that was the one.’ It’s little things like that. I don’t know how many times I’ll be sitting here and talking crap to him and he shoots it right back to me. Those are the things that are fun.

“It’s not just getting our bats or getting our equipment. It’s the one-liners. You could be grinding in your head a little bit before you get into the on-deck circle and then he says something to you and it puts a smile on your face. You’re like, ‘All right. I’m ready to go.’ We’re all just humans who play baseball. He treats us like that.”

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Crognale arrives at the ballpark about seven hours before first pitch. He hangs the uniforms at the lockers, folds towels, fills the water coolers, gets sunflower seeds ready, polishes batting helmets, and makes sure the bullpen is stocked with supplies. He ends his night scraping dirt off the players’ cleats and hanging washed uniforms to dry.

Batboy is a part-time gig, the bottom rung in the clubhouse services department. Crognale won’t do it forever and hopes to stick with the Phillies in a full-time position. For now, this is a dream job with the chance to make an impact.

“I like to think that I have a way of rubbing positive energy onto people,” Crognale said. “I had an internal goal going into my time as a batboy to do everything I could to bring positive energy and try to get us back to the playoffs.”

“The Phillies really got me through it.”

Crognale grew up a crazed fan, falling for the Phils just before they started the magical run that included the team’s last World Series title.

“We didn’t have a lot of money when he was growing up,” said Crognale’s mother, Tory Jenson. “Every year, I would tell him that we could either go to the Shore for a couple days or we could go to a couple Phillies games. He always chose the Phillies games. That was like our vacation.”

That crazed fan now feels like a part of the team. The Phillies entered June with baseball’s best record, rattling off wins with a roster of likable personalities. They have leaders like Schwarber, characters like Brandon Marsh, party hosts like Garrett Stubbs, and superstars like Harper. They also have a culture where the batboy feels like more than the guy who cleans their cleats.

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“They’re amazing,” Crognale said. “They make you feel welcome. They care about you. If something is going on, they want to know about it. They’re cracking jokes with you in the dugout. They’re just a really fun group of guys. We’re there to help them, but they don’t treat us that way. I can’t thank them enough as a team because they don’t have to do that. But they do. And it makes me have a lot more fun every day.”

Crognale was trying out for his high school baseball team in the spring of 2014 when he felt excruciating pain in his right knee. He had an MRI, was sent to CHOP, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma was diagnosed. Crognale briefly thought his leg might get amputated before doctors assured him that everything would be OK. He just needed to stay positive.

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“It was horrible,” his mother said. “There’s not a lot of support for parents, so whenever I hear about other parents going through it, my heart goes out to them. It’s the hardest thing in the world to watch your kid suffer and you can’t do anything about it.”

“I’m a firm believer that what you believe will manifest itself into your life. Stay positive and good things will happen. If you give into negative thinking, it’ll drive you down. That’s just my life philosophy and I tried to share it with him. But he was positive to start with. He was born a positive little force.”

Crognale graduated from Temple in 2021, missing his duties at the ballpark for a game to deliver the commencement address at the graduation ceremony for the Klein College of Media and Communication. He told his classmates that “cancer is a part of my past, but I never allowed it to define me.” Cancer, Crognale said, altered his perspective. And now he’s using the disease to help others.

“They make you feel welcome. They care about you. If something is going on, they want to know about it. They’re cracking jokes with you in the dugout. They’re just a really fun group of guys. We’re there to help them but they don’t treat us that way.”

Crognale is a nominee for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Visionary of the Year, raising money for people who are facing the same battle he had a decade ago. He held a fundraiser on Thursday night in Barrington and is raising money through donations, some of which have been pledged by current Phillies players. Winning the award, Crognale said, would let others know about the places you can go after you beat cancer.

“I want this to represent that there’s light after these experiences,” he said.

The Phillies were playing on ESPN during Crognale’s first week when Tim Schmidt, the team’s previous batboy, reminded the new guy that the game was on national TV. Crognale nodded. Of course, he knew that.

“That means you have to run fast, man,” said Schmidt, who now works in the clubhouse. “I’m just saying. The whole world’s watching.”

Schmidt was simply trying to tease the new batboy, but he gave Crognale an idea. He would run fast. Everywhere. Crognale sprints to get a bat, hustles to second base to pick up a runner’s batting gloves, and charges out new balls to the umpire. His mom watches the games on TV and sees her son standing on the dugout step like a runner on the starting blocks.

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“I want to replicate what I’m feeling,” Crognale said. “I’ve decided ever since then to put my all into everything and run as fast as I can and show my passion I have not just for baseball but the Phillies and to show how grateful I am to be around these guys and make a difference.”

It isn’t lost on Crognale that he makes his name on the field by sprinting a decade after cancer was found in his knee. And sometimes he feels a tweak.

“When I have pain in my knee, it’s a reminder of where I came from,” Crognale said. “I used to tell myself when I was going through treatments that there’s more to life than where I was at when I was in that bed. I was like, ‘There has to be more coming. I don’t think this is what I was here to do. I haven’t done enough.’ I just tried to keep pushing.”

The players notice his effort, too.

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“He has the respect of everyone, just because of the way he goes about his business around us,” Schwarber said. “He takes his job very seriously. He’s no-nonsense. No offense, there’s some batboys in the league who can get a little lost. He’s on top of everything.”

“We have all these different helmets and he makes sure that when we’re home and I’m DH’ing, that my helmet is in the bat rack in the cage with all my stuff in it waiting for me. Or when he’s sprinting out here and he’s waiting for me to give him my guards and batting gloves. He’s always right next to me. It’s the little things and he’s on it every single time.”

The Phillies were pushing last September to the postseason when the players asked Sheridan if Crognale could travel with them on the road. The batboy is usually restricted to home games while the Phillies use an employee of the opposing team on the road. But these games were crucial. The Phillies needed their guy. Four weeks later, they were headed back to the playoffs.

“I was humbled beyond words when I found out that they wanted to go on the road with them,” Crognale said. “We have a great team. To have players of that caliber care about the work I do and the impact I made on their routines, that meant the world to me because I knew that my effort had been noticed.”

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The kid who used to watch the Phillies every night in a hospital bed flew last September on the team’s chartered plane and stayed in high-class hotels. Crognale felt like a big leaguer.

His mother watched on TV as her son — the kid who forced himself to the window to catch a glimpse of the fireworks — helped the current Phillies do their thing. A decade ago , Crognale didn’t know what life would be like after that summer in the hospital. The only thing he could do was stay positive. Now he is in the dugout urging the Phillies to do the same.

“We watched it from afar and that instilled that love of baseball and the love of the Phillies,” his mother said. “For him to be a part of it, in whatever small way he contributes in the clubhouse and with the players, it’s just amazing that he’s there.”

Staff writer Scott Lauber contributed to this story.