‘That’s John Middleton!’ Why the Phillies owner is always wandering around Citizens Bank Park.

John Middleton was crouched down Monday night as he stuffed the mini-refrigerator in his private suite with water bottles when he lifted his head over the counter.

“What do you guys want to eat?” The Phillies owner shouted.

Another game was about to begin, but Middleton’s luxury box — suite No. 35, directly behind home plate — no longer belonged to him. He handed his tickets to a group of fans he met as he wandered outside Citizens Bank Park, escorted them into the ballpark, walked them through the main concourse, and up onto an elevator.

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When a ballpark employee asked the group to see their tickets as they entered the suite level, they simply told her they were with the owner.

Middleton — who first rebuffed a reporter’s attempt to shadow him for a game before agreeing to it — does this almost every night as he leaves his office inside the ballpark with a stack of tickets in his back pocket. He greets fans as they wait to enter, introducing himself — “Hi, I’m John” — just in case they don’t recognize the billionaire who famously said he wanted his trophy back and promised to spend stupid money to do so.

If a fan is sitting upstairs, Middleton reaches into his pocket for an upgrade. If a fan wants to meet Ben Davis, he makes a phone call. If a fan asks for a selfie, Middleton holds the camera. And if a group of friends are supposed to sit in Section 241, they might find themselves suddenly hanging in Middleton’s box. And the owner will even order them food.

“Some of us just happened to time it right when we were walking in,” said Delaware County’s Kevin Coghlan as Middleton led him and his friends to the box. “You don’t kick a horse in the mouth when it shows up like that. It just shows how down to earth he is. I’ve seen him in interviews before and to see him be this personable, just mixing in with the fans who were coming in through the gates and then to offer us his suite for the night, it’s a fantastic feeling.”

Middleton was in his mid-20s when he was inspired by a book called The Search for Excellence, which explained what made businesses successful. A chapter titled “Management By Wandering Around,” described how CEOs who regularly walked around their business would connect with employees and customers and learn things that they could not have if they just sat in their office all day.

Middleton implemented it, making a habit to walk around his father’s tobacco factory and walk around the stores that carried their products. He would tell employees how what they were doing for eight hours a day contributed to the company’s success. He asked them how he could make their jobs better. He talked to them.

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“It gave me a chance to build relationships, talk to people, and find out things that were going on in our company that I wouldn’t have known without these relationships,” Middleton said. “There’s just a lot of really good benefits.”

And that’s why he’s been spotted so often in places where professional sports owners are seldom seen. He hangs outside the ballpark gates as fans wait to enter, rides the elevators, talks to ushers and security guards, and watches games from the upper levels. He’s by himself — no security guards or handlers — as he wanders the ballpark dressed like he left work early. One fan grabbed his ID badge on Monday to make sure it was really him.

“Holy crap, that’s John Middleton,” Gloucester County’s Teddy Puitz said after spotting the owner walking on 11th Street and receiving tickets in Section 116.

When they were building Citizens Bank Park, Middleton asked David Montgomery — then the team’s president — to put aside some seats near the field for the owners. So each night, Middleton has two options: watch his team from a suite or sit in the third row behind home plate. Not bad.

But he gave those tickets — Diamond Club Row C — to four fans sitting Monday in Section 429. Middleton hopped off an elevator at the top of the ballpark during the second inning and searched for someone he thought would appreciate it. Gaile Bober said it was better than her birthday a week earlier at the ballpark.

“This is the best,” said Bober, who lives in Elkins Park. “I thought it was great when they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. I was mortified, but this is unbelievable.”

If you want to be authentic as part of the integrity of the job, you have to be there in the good times and bad times.

Earlier this month, Middleton handed the Diamond Club tickets to a bachelorette party while putting a Little League team in his suite. Another night, he gave out career advice in the upper deck.

“This young woman who just graduated asked me what I thought was a great question. She said what advice would I give my 23-year-old self,” Middleton said. “It’s a little hackneyed, but I said, ‘You need to find something you love to do. Work shouldn’t be work. You should be getting up every day energized about what you’re doing and looking forward to doing it. If you don’t feel that way, you’re not going to do a good job.

“It takes a lot of perseverance, persistence to be successful. And to do that, you have to really love what you do. I told her to find something you love and then work really hard and be persistent because you’re not going to have instant success. Hell, in my case, it took 20-plus years.”

He escorted the four fans to the Diamond Club and now it was time for the owner to watch the game. So Middleton stepped back onto the elevator, said hi to the fans who didn’t seem to know who he was, and asked the operator to take him back to the top of the ballpark. He could have watched the game from his suite or the Diamond Club but was instead going to sit in Section 309.

Middleton wasn’t sure how he would be greeted as the Phils were down three runs and had just been swept by the Cubs. He stopped before walking up the steps, said he might get booed, but said he could handle the jeers. He said he wanders the ballpark in good times or bad. Middleton looked out at the crowd, found an open seat, and squeezed in.

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“If you’re in it, you’re in it,” Middleton said. “If you want to be authentic as part of the integrity of the job, you have to be there in the good times and bad times. If you’re only there in the good times, they all know that. I’m not going to run for the covers. You can’t do that. It’s part of it. Whether it’s sunny, whether it’s rainy, whether it’s cold, whether it’s hot.

“I was out there on Saturday when it was 97 degrees. I’m in 303. The right-field bleachers, for God’s sake. We had sun on us until like 7:30 at night. I had to take a shower when I got home. But you have to be there because my fans are there. How can my customers be there but not me? What does that look like?”

Watching the game from the upper levels, Middleton said, reminds him of sitting in the grandstand at Connie Mack Stadium or squinting to follow the ball from the upper deck at Veterans Stadium. He was in right field of the 600 level with his dad when the Phillies won the 1980 World Series. Those seats felt like a zip code away from home plate: Middleton said the ball became a blur when it was hit.

He was just glad to be in the ballpark. But why was he sitting in the cheap seats at The Vet? He was not yet a team owner, but surely Middleton — who is now worth $3.4 billion, per Forbes — could have found a better seat.

“People think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Middleton said. “The only reason we moved out of our two-bedroom house when I was 3 or 4 was because my parents said, ‘This is crazy. At some point, we can’t have this boy and girl sleeping in the same room.’ We had one bathroom in the house. I didn’t grow up in the lap of luxury.”

The tobacco company was sold in 2007 for $2.9 billion and Middleton’s life is much different than it was when he and his dad were tracing the movement of the outfielders to determine where the ball was headed. But it wasn’t always that grand. He remembers in the early 1990s — just as the tobacco company was being thumped by the recession — when his wife called to tell him that the car broke down and she was stuck at a gas station on Ardmore Avenue. They needed a new car, she told him.

“It was like 10 years old and had a hundred-plus-thousand miles on it,” Middleton said. “I just said ‘We can’t afford it. We don’t have the money to buy a new car. I can’t even put a down payment on it, and if I did, my credit would never hold through.’ We got the car fixed and started to save money and cut back where we could. That was 1993. Not even 30 years ago and I couldn’t afford a new car.”

That’s why Middleton — one of the richest men in the country — feels at home at the top of the ballpark. He sat with the fans there for the next six innings, cheered with them as his team staged an unlikely comeback, and no one booed him. It would be easy for Middleton to sit every night in his lush box or his field seats with a spectacular view. But sitting upstairs offers him an even better perspective.

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“I’ve always been a person who listened to my parents and my grandparents a lot,” Middleton said. “They had a lot of wisdom. One of my grandmother’s favorite sayings was, ‘You’re no better than anybody else, but you’re second to none.’ Instead of saying ‘We’re all equal’ she broke that sentiment into two parts. You can’t put yourself up here because you’re no better than anyone else, but in the same token, don’t let anyone else put themselves above you because you’re second to none. I’m living that. I think my grandmother would say, ‘You’re listening to me.’”

Middleton’s family has held a stake in the Phillies since 1994, but only real diehards would have been able to recognize him in the ballpark until recent seasons. For decades, the ownership group operated in the shadows while Montgomery served as their face. That’s the way MLB wanted it to be, Middleton said.

“Baseball only wants one person and that’s the control person,” Middleton said. “We weren’t supposed to be out there, and if we tried to be like that, we would have been slapped down. The commissioner doesn’t want anyone speaking on behalf of the team who is not the control person. But I was still around the stadium. I would always walk around.”

Middleton started to become more visible over the last 10 years and was appointed in 2016 as the team’s control person and managing partner. He is not the team’s sole owner, but he is certainly the face of the group. Middleton is at the gates and walking the concourses every night.

“There’s no question that people respond to me differently now as ‘Oh, you’re John Middleton, you run the team’ as opposed to ‘You’re what? A limited partner? Who cares? Go get better players on the field and spend your money,’” Middleton said.

Walking along Pattison Avenue, Middleton said he was on a mission on Monday to find a group for Suite 35. The owner’s box wasn’t being used that night, which meant it would belong to fans. But he wanted to find the right people.

I’ve been a fan my whole life and this has never happened. I’ve never rubbed elbows with an owner. .. He’s filling up the refreshments for us.

And there they were — six friends and their kids — standing on the corner of 11th Street after walking over from Packer Park. They were going to meet more friends on the scoreboard porch. But then Middleton stopped to talk to them.

They were soon in Middleton’s suite, watching the owner hurry around to get the place fit for them. He filled the refrigerators, pulled condiments out of the cabinets, got them scorecards, and brought two buckets of popcorn. They asked Middleton how Bryce Harper’s fractured thumb was feeling, when Jean Segura would return, and if the Phils had any shot to land Juan Soto. He gave them all candid answers, the owner proving to be an open book inside his box.

“Wild? Are you kidding me,” said South Philly’s Eddie McReynolds. “I’ve been a fan my whole life and this has never happened. I’ve never rubbed elbows with an owner. This has never happened. He’s filling up the refreshments for us. I don’t know. I’m kind of speechless.”

Workers soon dropped off trays of hoagies, cheesesteaks, and soft pretzels, and filled the freezers with ice cream. Lisa Adams — an Aramark employee who keeps Middleton’s suite filled every night when the owner is there — told the group she’d get them whatever they needed.

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The game was ready to start as Middleton left his box to the group he met minutes earlier. The friends told Middleton they might never leave.

“You don’t have to,” Middleton said. “But the lights turn out 20 minutes after the last out.”