Kyle Kendrick feared the worst after his son was hit by a car. Now Kyle Jr. is back on the field and hitting homers.

Kyle Kendrick used to walk into the batting cage he built in his Clearwater, Fla., backyard and just stand in it. He dreamed of having something like this when he was a kid and the former Phillies pitcher was in awe of what he had.

“I would just look around and say, ‘This is sweet,’” said Kendrick, a member of the Phillies’ starting rotation from 2007-14.

It was there that he spent hours throwing batting practice to his son, Kyle Jr., as the son fell in love with the dad’s game. Kendrick even installed lights so his boy could keep swinging. The batting cage became their place.

“They grow up fast,” Kendrick said. “Pretty soon, he’ll be in high school and then college, and he won’t want to go into the cage anymore.”

For a few weeks last fall, the dad wasn’t sure if his son would ever be able to get back in the cage after the 12-year-old was hit by a car driving nearly 50 mph while he was walking across the street near his home.

Kyle Jr. broke both femurs, had his mouth wired shut, and spent a week in the hospital after six hours of surgery. The Kendricks first feared their son wouldn’t make it. Next, they wondered if he’d ever play baseball again. And then they watched him leave his wheelchair to get back into the batting cage with his dad.

The son sat on a bucket in the cage 18 days after the accident while his dad bounced baseballs toward him. He nabbed each hopping grounder with ease and fired throws back to his dad. There was no fear, his mother Stephenie said. Kyle Jr. was back in the cage.

“I was just so proud,” his mom said. “This kid was just hit by a car and he wasn’t even flinching. It didn’t faze him. He was so driven to get back. He was on that bucket swinging the bat. He was catching and throwing. He was fielding ground balls. I was amazed.”

Kyle Kendrick kept calling his son’s phone, wondering where he was after he rode his bike that Sunday to fish in a nearby lake. Finally, a police officer answered. He told Kendrick that his son was in an accident and he had to get there fast.

“I actually heard the sirens from my house,” Kendrick said. “I was like ‘Oh, my gosh.’”

Kyle Jr. was riding his bike home when he stopped at an intersection so he could walk his bike across the street. A driver waved him on and the boy started to cross. But another car did not see him. The boy was launched into the air before crashing down onto the car and striking the pavement. The driver was not charged. There were ambulances, firefighters, and a crowd of people there when the dad arrived. It was the worst experience of his life, Kendrick said.

He called his wife, who was driving home from a meeting for their daughter’s volleyball team.

“He couldn’t speak,” Stephenie said. “The cop got on the phone and said they had to helicopter him to the hospital. I said, ‘Helicopter him there? Why? Why can’t he take an ambulance? Is he going to survive? How bad is it?”

The son underwent a bevy of X-rays and MRIs at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., where doctors learned that he broke both femurs but somehow did not have a spinal or head injury. Even his teeth were mostly intact as the boy lost just one.

The accident happened three years after Stephenie’s brother Chris died. Kyle Jr. was close to his Uncle Chris, who loved to fish. She asked her late brother on the way to the hospital to pull some strings and limit the damage.

“I swear he had a hand in it,” Stephenie said. “Every doctor said, ‘He shouldn’t have survived this. This is a miracle.’”

The boy’s face looked like he had gone 12 rounds when his mom saw him in the hospital. His jaw was broken but he still managed to say, “Hi, mom.” Stephenie told her son to show everyone how tough he was. He did just that.

He screamed when his legs were pulled into traction but he fought through it. His pain medication was limited overnight to prepare for surgery in the morning and the boy bore the discomfort. He was tough.

“He really is very tough,” his mom said. “And it’s mentally tough.”

The parents sat in the hospital cafeteria for 6 hours while their son underwent surgery.

“That was the longest and most emotional time,” Kendrick said. “It’s six hours of surgery and he’s under for a long time. As a parent, it’s the worst.”

The surgeon installed metal rods into Kyle Jr.’s femurs through his hips and was so precise that he left the tiniest scar. The doctor told the parents that their son would heal in six months. That sounded a little optimistic, the dad thought. But they were clean breaks, the doctor said. There were no growth plate issues. The boy would bounce back. He got lucky, the doctor said.

The boy stayed in the hospital for a week with his mom while dad stayed at home with their daughters, Sophia and Sloane. Everyone at the hospital was great, mom said. Well, everyone except for the people who kept removing and inserting the catheter.

“I was like, ‘OK. No more students are coming in to try the catheter. We’re going to use your best person who knows how to use a catheter and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Stephenie, who lives in Florida but still has the accent of the girl from Glenolden who attended Archbishop Prendergast. “I pulled out a whole Delco thing there. You don’t even know. I was real nice until I was like, ‘That’s enough. Now leave the friggin’ catheter in until he can pee on his own.’”

Kyle Jr. returned to school in early December, less than a month after the accident. His buddies at Skycrest Christian School pushed the sixth grader’s wheelchair around the halls and carried his books. He went snowboarding just three weeks after surgery. The doctor was right.

Kendrick took his son to fish at the spot where he was headed that Sunday and they went back to the scene of the accident. He bought his son a new bike.

One of their daughters used to ride horses, and the trainer always put her right back on the horse if she fell off. There’s no guide instructing parents how to deal with an accident like this. So the Kendricks did what they thought was best.

“We got right back on the horse,” Stephenie said. “He’s a badass. He really is.”

And they got the boy in the cage. Kyle Jr.’s travel team — which is coached by his dad — had a trip planned for June to a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y. The fields are named after big-league parks and nestled in the valley near the Baseball Hall of Fame. This was a trip the father and son had been looking forward to. But Kendrick worried his son wouldn’t be able to make it.

He played his first game for the Florida Burn in January as his dad used him as a designated hitter to keep him out of the field. His Burn teammates wore his number on their batting helmets and some of the other parents cried. He was back, but the Kendricks noticed their son’s confidence wasn’t where it used to be.

He had missed weeks of baseball and had trouble timing his swing. They couldn’t fault him if he was tentative still from the accident. The father and son kept working.

“He’s a good coach,” the son said. “It’s a lot of fun to hit with him and then to have him as my coach. Just working with him and learning what he learned is really cool. It’s special.”

Kyle Kendrick said his son being “able to play at 100 percent after this is a miracle.”

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“When I got back out there with him, I said, ‘This is so cool,’” the father said. “He could’ve passed. And now to still play? He could’ve been paralyzed. Just to be out there doing baseball stuff is unbelievable.

“I really didn’t think he’d be able to play again. I didn’t know how he’d move. A lot of thoughts go through your mind. For him to come back, he looks normal if not better. We’re very lucky and grateful. It’s cool to be back with him. To see him on the field was awesome for me.”

He made it to Cooperstown and the team’s first game was delayed until near midnight. The boys didn’t play that night until way past bedtime. They were a bunch of friends on a baseball trip. They slept in bunks for a week, traded pins, ordered pizza, went to the Hall of Fame, and watched fireworks. Playing late at night was perfect.

It became even better when young Kyle got hold of a pitch and drove it to center field. His first homer came seven months after an accident that gave his parents the worst scare of their lives.

“It was freezing cold,” Kyle Jr. said. “I could hardly feel my hands. I got a high pitch and I just swung up at it.”

He circled the bases and his teammates — the same kids who left a giant banner of support on his lawn when he was in the hospital — rushed toward home plate. Kyle Jr. slowed his jog as he neared the gang of kids and skipped onto home plate as his buddies went wild.

“That felt so good,” Kyle Jr. said. “Everyone was pumped. Everyone was jumping because it was my first one.”

A day later, he did it again. It was “oppo taco,” he said of his opposite-field homer.

The kid who fell in love with baseball in the batting cage his dad built was back doing what he loved.

“I just love to play,“ he said. ”It’s a lot of fun.”