The Major League Baseball draft was still more than two months away, keeping Chris Newell’s focus in May on his college team and its big weekend series against an in-state rival. The first two games — three hits including a homer for the University of Virginia against Virginia Tech — sent Newell into Sunday’s finale on a roll.

He returned to the clubhouse after batting practice, checked his phone, and saw a message from his friend back home in Newtown Square.

“He texted me that his dad was in heaven,” Newell said. “Right before the game. That kind of hit me hard.”

Joe Catania, his son Luke told Newell, died that morning eight weeks after a tumor was found in his brain. The 67-year-old was a respected Delaware County lawyer, father of four boys, and founder of a Sunday night baseball league for adults with functional needs that provided a teenage Newell with perspective when he was dreaming of moments like this month’s MLB draft.

A former star at Malvern Prep, the 21-year-old Newell is expected to be selected sometime in the early rounds of the draft, which begins Sunday. He hit .278 with 21 homers and an .860 OPS in three seasons at Virginia. The 6-foot-3 left-handed hitting outfielder was even better this summer in the Cape Cod League.

He kept the news to himself, grabbed one of his orange cleats, wrote Catania’s name onto the heel with a black marker, and headed to the field. Another game was ready to begin.

“I just wanted to go play,” Newell said. “Because that’s what he would have wanted me to do.”

The national anthem blared last Sunday at Gable Park in Newtown Square as more than 20 players — all adults with functional needs — stood on the foul lines. They wore full uniforms — caps, jerseys, pants, belts, and socks — and played for two hours with major-league rules, 90-foot base paths, and an umpire. Runners stole bases, batters advanced on dropped third strikes, the ump caught some grief, and the batters even picked their own walk-up songs.

This was Joe Catania’s dream.

He helped organize the Newtown-Edgemont Little League’s Challenger Division, a baseball program for individuals with physical and intellectual challenges. The division plays with modified rules as every player bats each inning, everyone is safe, and score is not kept. The players cover the field but coaches handle pitching and catching duties.

And players grow out of the Challenger Division at 22 years old.

His sons — Jimmy and Luke Catania were both born with mild cases of microcephaly, a rare neurological condition that affects head size and brain development — and their friends loved baseball, so Catania was determined to find a way to keep them on the field.

That’s how the Angels were born.

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“The next thing you know, on Sunday nights we have 30 adults with special needs coming to play baseball,” said Matt Catania, Joe’s son. “It’s cool, but it’s also a little bit enlightening. A lot of them travel a distance to come play. I said to Dad, ‘You know Michael and his family travel from Doylestown. You believe that?’ He said, ‘Yeah, Matt.’ There isn’t anything else sometimes, which is unfortunate. Because with special-needs individuals, they have school and programs through school, but once they become adults, the activities and programs are a little bit few and far between.”

Catania teamed in 2014 with Gary Brooks, who runs the Berwyn-Paoli Little League’s Challenger Division, to bring their players together. The Angels split into two teams and play a game every Sunday night from May to October on a turf field with dugouts and home-run fences behind the Newtown Township administration building.

“Some of them are really, really good and some of them aren’t, but it doesn’t matter because they all think they’re superstars, which is a pretty cool feeling,” said Newell’s father, John, a close friend of Joe Catania’s who coaches every Sunday. “It’s a real enlightening thing to be able to go up there. You look at how happy these kids are.”

Joe Catania wanted the Angels to follow major-league rules as he thought the players were ready for the real thing and believed the lessons baseball teaches — a chance to always redeem yourself with the next swing — could be beneficial for the adults.

But the players would need to make adjustments. The first came when the very first batter hit a grounder to Luke Catania at shortstop. He threw the ball to first. Coach Matt Catania and his father looked at each other, waiting to see how the players would react. The umpire called him out, the batter returned to the dugout, and the game continued.

“This might actually work,” Joe Catania said to Matt.

The new rules also meant they needed a catcher, but no player was ready yet that first summer to crouch behind home plate.

“Chris said, ‘I’ll catch. I’ll be there,’” Matt Catania said.

Newell was just 13 years old, but his summer schedule was already filling up with baseball as his career began to take off. He still found time to be at Gable Park.

“Every Sunday,” said Matt Catania, who coached Newell the previous summer in Little League and played baseball at Cardinal O’Hara and Dickinson College. “It wasn’t a chore for him. He wanted to be there. It was just so cool. Natural. Yeah, Chris is a hell of a baseball player, but even a better person. He gets it.”

Newell’s baseball career has been full of ups (he was the state’s Gatorade player of the year at Malvern Prep) and downs (his OPS dropped more than 500 points as a sophomore at Virginia after being named college baseball’s co-freshman of the year). Yet he found a way to ride it out.

He didn’t grow overconfident in the good times or despondent in the bad times. He stayed even-keeled, the key to finding long-term success in a game so often defined by how a player responds to failure. And maybe it was those Sunday nights with the Angels that helped him find that level ground.

“Even when he was young, he got it,” said John Newell, a Newtown Township police captain. “He realized, ‘OK. I’m having a fit because I’m 13 and striking out. These guys get a single and they think it’s Christmas.’ I think Chris got to appreciate some stuff and realize ,‘Hey, I complain about a lot, but these guys have huge uphill battles but still smile every day and go out there and play.’”

Newell had not yet started high school when he offered to be the Angels’ catcher, and he was helping coach the team while he was home from college. As his baseball career climbed toward this month’s MLB draft, the Angels were there for him every summer to provide perspective.

“I think that’s important when you do have success in life: You have to take a step back and realize where you’re at,” Chris Newell said. “I’m super grateful, and you can’t take anything for granted. If I go back and I look at these guys ... I can have my worst day ever and they still have to [persevere every day]. Whether I go 0-for-4 on a day, take a step back and reflect and think about those guys.

“When you see those guys smile, you just feel so good and know you’re doing something right. It makes my heart grow for those guys every time I go. It’s an incredible opportunity, and I’m sure thankful that I’m able to do it.”

The first sign that something wasn’t right came at the gym where Joe Catania worked out six days a week. There was some pain in his left leg, and he thought it must be muscle soreness. But then it started to get in the way of his workout.

“That annoyed him,” Matt Catania said.

Doctors found a nerve impingement in his back and Catania had back surgery in February. He was cleared in just two weeks for physical activity. He had some shoulder discomfort, but his leg was fine.

“He was acting like there was a leaderboard at Rothman,” said Matt, who is an attorney at Duane Morris. “I don’t want any painkillers, this or that. He was so proud of himself and I was happy for him, but I still wished he would have slowed down a little. But that’s not his nature. He was so anxious to be back working out.”

Three weeks later, Joe Catania had trouble sleeping, so he woke up early and grabbed doughnuts for neighbors who were going on a trip. That was him, his son said. He came home and told his wife, Maureen, that his vision was blurred and his face was tingling. He was having a stroke.

An ambulance — “I can drive myself,” Catania told his wife — rushed him to the hospital. An MRI exam found a small mass on his thalamus, which serves as a command center in the brain.

Catania was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where they were able to remove half of the tumor. It wasn’t a normal tumor, the neurosurgeon told the family, as the substance resembled dense scar tissue and was difficult to resect. They removed as much as they could.

Joe Catania stayed in the hospital for two weeks — he streamed Virginia’s games so he didn’t miss any of Newell’s at-bats — and was cleared to return home.

Family and friends outfitted Catania’s Newtown Square home for a wheelchair and chemotherapy was scheduled. Catania, who played on the 1967 Newtown-Edgemont team that finished third in the Little League World Series, was ready to swing.

“His attitude on top of everything, on top of the darkest news you could imagine, he stared right back and said, ‘OK. Tell me what we have to do.’ That’s why I really thought we had this beat,” Matt Catania said. “It’s one of those things that year, it appeared grim, but it still felt like we were in control and doing something about it and resolving it. We had every reason to believe that there were still plenty of good years ahead.”

Matt Catania, 35, lives near his parents’ house in Newtown Square and had his family over shortly after his father returned from the hospital. Joe Catania loved his son’s three children, especially 3-year-old Eloise, who was his first granddaughter.

“She’s the first girl in the family. Oh my goodness. They were so tight,” Matt Catania said.

When the night was over, Eloise held her grandfather’s hand as he wheeled himself to the car, telling him, “I’ll help you, Grandpa.”

“He gets to the car and says to my mom, ‘I’m really going to miss a lot, aren’t I?’” Matt Catania said. “My mom says, ‘No, Joe.’ That was the first time I heard anything even slightly negative. I knew what he was thinking.”

Joe Catania was still in the hospital when he told his son to make sure he did right for the Angels this season. The first game was still a few weeks away, and everyone expected Coach Joe to be there. Matt Catania told his dad not to worry.

Victus Sports — the King of Prussia-based baseball bat supplier to major-league stars such as Bryce Harper — outfitted the league with new uniforms and gave each player a custom bat with his name on it. Matt Catania’s cousin, John, brought his DJ equipment to the first game to play walk-up music for each batter. It was supposed to be a one-game treat for the players, but John Catania has been back ever since, even adding organ sound effects during at-bats to make Gable Field feel like the big leagues.

“We love it,” Luke Catania said. “It’s the best thing. John Cena’s song when I come up, I love it.”

Jimmy and Luke Catania both graduated from Marple Newtown High School. Jimmy Catania, 36, works at Paul Bunyan Fitness, the CrossFit gym his father trained at, and Luke Catania, 30, works for Woofies, a company that makes dog treats. They watch pro wrestling, love the Beatles, and can seem to find a movie quote that matches any situation. Most of all, they love baseball.

“We like to do it,” Luke Catania said. “It was our dad’s idea and we just wanted see how it would go if we did the real thing. Just like the Phillies.”

Coach Joe died before opening day, and Matt Catania told the Angels at his father’s funeral at St. Anastasia Church to think of him like Obi-Wan Kenobi, as most of the players love Star Wars. Just like The Force, Coach Joe would always be with his players.

Before the opener, Matt Catania gathered the Angels — each of them wearing “Coach Joe” patches stitched onto their red jerseys — and told them to play like Coach Joe would have wanted. The show goes on, he said.

“Through the base,” his brother Luke shouted, as Joe Catania often emphasized that the players needed to keep running down the line after reaching first.

Exactly, Matt Catania said. He knew then that the Angels were ready to keep playing.

“It’s been absolutely incredible,” Matt Catania said. “Tough because my dad and Coach Joe is gone and they knew they could count on Dad. But the way that they have all approached such a sad situation with such positivity and effort, it’s inspirational. They’re more resilient than we give them credit for, I’ll tell you that.”

Jimmy and Luke Catania were in Charlottesville, Va., to watch Newell play that weekend against Virginia Tech. They watched Newell homer on Friday night before being called home Saturday when their father was rushed to the hospital. The part of the tumor that they were unable to remove had ruptured and bled, flooding his brain stem.

No intervention was possible, the neurosurgeon told the family. Catania died Sunday morning.

That afternoon, family and close friends gathered in the Catania living room and someone put on Virginia’s series finale with Virginia Tech. John Newell did not yet tell his son that Joe Catania had died, deciding to wait until after the game was finished. Newell was having a good weekend, and his father didn’t want to burden him just before first pitch.

Newell came to the plate in the second inning and rocked a pitch that landed just foul of being a home run. That would’ve been neat, his father thought. A few pitches later, he crushed another one. It traveled more than 400 feet, sailing for a homer over the batter’s eye in center field.

Back in Newtown Square, John Newell smiled.

“I said to the boys, ‘He did that for your dad,’” said Newell, still unaware that his son knew of Catania’s death. “Luke says, ‘Oh, yeah. He told me he was going to do that this morning when I told him my dad went to heaven.’ We all turned to him and said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I told him this morning.’ We all were just like, holy s —. It was crazy. Everyone got chills.”

That explained why John Newell watched his son point to the sky as he neared home plate, something he never saw him do after a home run. Later in the game, the broadcast caught Newell’s tribute — “Joe” inside a heart — on his cleat.

“It was one of the craziest moments of my career,” Chris Newell said. “It was like he was talking to me and that he was there. He made that happen. It was just incredible. When I was running around the bases, I just couldn’t help but think about how good life is and how good God is. That was a sign that he was there that day, and that’s something I’ll never forget for as long as I live.

“Nothing was too big for him, and he always wanted to do stuff for the community and his boys and all the special-needs kids in our area. He never put himself first. He was always putting others in front of him. Just a super down-to-earth guy. He loved everyone. He loved me.”

Newell returned home Wednesday from the Cape Cod League, where he provided scouts with one final look before the draft. He was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2019 after being a high school All-American but decided against what his father said was “almost life-changing money” to go to college.

By next week, Newell could be a professional.

“I hope he does good in the draft,” Jimmy Catania said. “It’s going to be awesome. We’re going to cheer for him. I hope he does real well.”

This was what he dreamed of when he started showing up on Sunday nights at Gable Field. The Angels knew him when he was a teenager, and now they hope to see Newell one day in the major leagues. The climb there will begin in some small town and the days will be long. But Newell has the perspective he needs.

“I’m just trying to carry his legacy and his name, and appreciate what he’s done for our community. It’s huge,” Newell said. “I have two best friends — Jimmy and Luke — because of him. I see them all the time. I talk to them pretty much every day. I don’t think there’s a better person in the world that you would want in your corner than Joe Catania. I’m going to have him in my corner for the rest of my career. Everything that I do will be for him and in his name and in his honor. Just an incredible human being.”

This draft — watching his friend’s son begin a climb toward the majors — would have been something that Joe Catania lived for. Catania’s sons will be with Newell when he hears his name called, and everyone will be thinking of the man whose name was on Newell’s cleats when he hit that homer.

Joe Catania won’t be in the room with them, but the moment might not have been possible without the perspective he helped provide. And that is how he’ll always be with Newell.

“There’s a lot of things that unfortunately he’s going to miss,” Matt Catania said. “It really wasn’t fair to him, someone who did everything right. This was the time that he was going to enjoy things like Chris getting drafted. He’d be the first one to say, ‘OK. Wherever he gets drafted. We’re going to see him play. I’ll organize it.’

“Chris loved my dad, and Dad loved Chris.”