The Phillies drafted Kelly Dugan off the set of an Adam Sandler movie. He’s still chasing his Hollywood ending.

Kelly Dugan finished his senior year of high school in Los Angeles and flew across the country in the summer of 2009 to be with his father in Boston. Dugan would soon become one of the top picks in the Major League Baseball draft — the Phillies selected him that June with their first choice — and he wanted to squeeze in time with his father before his career started.

His father, Dennis, is a Hollywood director and was in Boston to shoot another film starring Adam Sandler. Kelly Dugan was a kid on the set of Happy Gilmore and even has a few lines in Big Daddy. He grew up on his father’s movie sets, many of which were Sandler flicks. So it was hard to find a better place for Dugan to be when his dream came true than with his dad on a set.

Dugan pulled on a Phillies cap, signed his contract, and grinned for a photo with the cast of Grown Ups, many of whom were the Hollywood stars he grew up admiring like Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, and Kevin James. Everyone was thrilled for Dugan. Especially Sandler despite his refusal to wear a Phils hat that day because he’s a New Yorker. It was the perfect start to a career that they all imagined would soon reach the majors.

“It was really special,” Dugan said. “And then the reality was that I was 18 years old and I showed up to rookie ball and had no idea what I was doing.”

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Dugan is now 32 years old and living for the third straight summer in a Lancaster hotel. He travels by bus with the independent Lancaster Barnstormers, makes little money, and played last week in front of 2,800 fans. The Phillies released him after the 2015 season and he has not been in affiliated baseball in six years. But his dream is still burning.

Dugan was hitting .326 last July — the same average he finished the previous season with — when he suffered a stress fracture in his foot while tracking down a fly ball. He was leading the Atlantic League with 23 homers and had a .686 slugging percentage. It finally felt like he was working his way back to the minor leagues.

He recommitted himself to baseball after dropping in 2019 to the independent ranks. He works every day in the offseason with Reggie Smith, his hitting coach who was a seven-time All-Star in the 1970s. He trains with Hollywood trainer Steve Zim and changed his diet under the advice of his wife, Jordan, a registered dietitian. Dugan’s commitment was being rewarded. And then he felt a pop in his foot.

He asked family members over the winter if they thought he should continue his chase. He plays roughly 80 miles from Citizens Bank Park, but the majors can often feel like a world away when you’re spending your own money to play professional baseball. Everyone told Dugan to keep going.

“I’ve been lucky because I’m in show business and you can keep going until you drop dead. But he’s in a business that has windows that close,” Dennis Dugan said. “So I said to him, ‘If it were me, and I had the season I was having last year and got hurt, I wouldn’t want to get to 40 years old and go, ‘Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I try one more time?’ Myself, I wouldn’t want to live a life of regret. But I said, ‘This isn’t my advice. It’s just what I would do.’

“You don’t make much money in the Atlantic League. I said, ‘We’ll back you. If you have a dream and want to pursue it, we’re there. We’ll back you up.’”

Dugan agreed and returned for another summer with the Barnstormers, who play in a 6,000-seat stadium and have $3 beers on Thursdays and fireworks every Saturday. He entered June hitting just .191 with a .724 OPS, but the Atlantic League didn’t start until May and Dugan has played in just 21 games. There’s still time for Dugan, a first baseman and corner outfielder, to find the swing he had the last two seasons.

“I’m just not going to stop,” said Dugan, who was selected in 2009′s second round after the Phillies did not have a first-round pick that summer. “I don’t know if people expect me to stop, but I’m just not going to do it. I just don’t believe that it’s time.

“I see a lot of guys who have super-prospect status and get the big contract and get ushered right into the majors. That’s just not the reality for many guys. That’s just how it is for some. For me, I thought I was the first pick and I would get there when I got there. It didn’t happen. But that didn’t stop me.”

Dugan flew to Philly after the draft to take batting practice with the big leaguers and watch a game from a Citizens Bank Park suite. His flight from Boston was canceled and his next flight made it to Philadelphia but could not land because of the weather. The plane returned to Boston and Dugan finally made it on the third attempt in time to watch the last few innings.

“Hopefully my career won’t be that rocky,” Dugan joked with reporters after arriving in South Philly.

Dugan was a star outfielder at Notre Dame High, the same L.A. high school that Pat Gillick attended. His family was living near Santa Monica before Dugan enrolled at the school in the San Fernando Valley. So they sold their newly built home in the Pacific Palisades and moved to Encino, buying a house with enough land to build a batting cage.

“I just said if he would’ve been a tennis player, we would’ve gotten a house with a tennis court,” Dennis Dugan said. “We’re just thankful that he didn’t want to play hockey because I’d have to learn how to drive a Zamboni. We looked at ourselves very early on that we don’t want to be those parents. We don’t want to be those parents who push their kid. We said whatever you want to do, whatever you want to pursue, we’ll back you 100 percent. But we’re not going to make you do it.”

Dugan hit .379 as a senior and had a scholarship to Pepperdine before he signed with the Phillies for $485,000. The Phillies worked him out twice before the draft and believed the switch-hitter could develop a power swing. He flew to Clearwater, Fla., to get started.

“On every baseball field he went from the time he was in tee-ball to his last game in high school, he was either the best player on the field or one of the two best. That’s just the way it was,” his father said. “Then he gets there and every guy there is that guy. It’s an awakening.”

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His seven minor-league seasons with the Phils were plagued by injuries, but he made it onto the 40-man roster before the 2015 season and was in triple A that August. Dugan, playing with a sore foot, hit just .221 in Lehigh Valley and was released after the season.

“It was extremely painful to not make the major leagues when I didn’t,” Dugan said. “But, at the same time, it reminds me that I wouldn’t have been close to the hitter I am now and been able to put myself through the experiments of making adjustments and the necessity to improve.”

Dugan was struggling in triple A in 2015 when his phone rang. It was Sandler.

“He said you just have to keep going,” Dugan said. “He said it took him a long time to get to where he was as a comedian. The perseverance of some of these guys is motivating to me. I just believe that that’s what is going to build character and hopefully I’ll get rewarded.”

Dugan told his father about the call. Of course Sandler called his son. They met in the early 1990s when Dugan brought an unknown comedian to a casting call for Brain Donors, a movie he was directing for the Zucker Brothers. And four times they turned away Dugan’s guy.

“It was Sandler,” Dennis Dugan said. “But Sandler wasn’t Sandler then. He was just a guy.”

A few years later, Dugan got a call that a film was about to shoot and they needed a director. He received the script, headed the next morning to the studio lot, and prepared to earn the job.

“I go to this office and knock on the door. The door opens and it’s Sandler,” Dugan said. “He goes ‘You?’ I go ‘You?’ He turns to everyone in the room and I’m still at the door. He says ‘This guy brought me in four times and kept trying to get me this movie. Every time I went back in, I said, ‘Man, they’re bringing me in again. I know I’m getting this job.’ Everyone was laughing. He turns to me and said, ‘You stood up for me. You got this job.’ I wasn’t even in the door. That’s who he is. He’s loyal and honest. Just a great guy.”

And that’s why Sandler called the son of the guy he hired to direct Happy Gilmore. The struggling minor leaguer needed a push just like that unknown comedian did. Sandler told Dugan about his early days doing standup, the criticisms he heard, and the work it took to become The Sandman. It was what Dugan needed to hear.

“It reminded me that stuff that’s great doesn’t come easy,” Dugan said.

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Dugan had success in the farm systems of Arizona and the Chicago Cubs but did not get past double A. He thought he had a shot to make it to the majors with Arizona but was released after rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. His dream was dimmed but not extinguished. Dugan latched on with the Chicago Dogs of the independent American Association and told himself he had to be all-in if he was going to keep chasing the dream.

“I had to put my ego aside,” Dugan said. “A lot of guys who go to indie ball, I think it’s a shock because you’re getting treated like you’re in the low minors again. It’s the grind and the travel and it’s difficult. But I had to double down on it. I made a decision that I’m going to push myself even more than when I was playing in affiliated ball. I just completely committed my life to it. It’s all I do. All I do is train, eat right; this is all I do with my life. I haven’t thought about anything else yet. I had to think, ‘Am I going to do this well or am I just going to do this an average way?’”

Dugan arrived in Lancaster in 2021 and hit 38 homers over the last two seasons. He looked like the power hitter the Phillies thought he could be. He focuses on fundamentals, works on his defense, and studies film in his hotel room every night. The teenager who felt lost in rookie ball is now a veteran in a league where everyone is playing to keep their dreams churning. Dugan loves it.

“He genuinely loves playing baseball,” Dennis Dugan said. “Growing up, he saw me when I was hot as a director and he saw me when I was cold as a director and I was doing really bad episodic television shows just to make money and keep practicing directing. He’s seen me grind and put in the hours and he’s also seen me be really successful and still put in the crazy hours. He knows that you have to work to succeed.”

Kelly Dugan watched last season as Wynton Bernard reached the majors with the Rockies at 31. He saw 34-year-old Drew Maggi debut with the Pirates earlier this year. There’s no reason, Dugan said, that he can’t be baseball’s next 30-something rookie. That’s why his family supports him every offseason to give it another go.

“I don’t know if it’s perseverance or if it’s like Sisyphus,” Dennis Dugan said. “He keeps rolling the baseball to the top of the hill and it keeps rolling back down. I think anybody else would’ve quit. He has the will of 10 people.

“I would be thrilled for him if it did happen. I’m not going to lie and say, ‘What will be will be.’ It would be spectacular and it would only be fair. But then again, the world isn’t always fair. It would be the right thing to happen if there is such a thing. Hard work and talent persevered.”

Dugan started his career on a movie set. Nearly 15 years later, he’s still chasing his Hollywood ending.

“I hope I can win rookie of the year. I hope I can be the oldest guy to do it,” he said. “I feel like it’s not implausible. I feel like I can walk in and hit. That’s my goal. I want to set my goals high. I don’t want to just get there, have a moment, and go back to the minors. I hope I can help someone and be their middle-of-the-lineup bat.

“I want to be the guy who a lot of people imagined I could be when I was younger. But I think it’s completely different now after going through the gauntlet.”