Opening day won’t be the same without John the Cool, a Phillies fan as big as any

They had a dentist’s appointment, Shawn McCullough told his children that April afternoon as he whisked them from school.

But why was Mom in the car? Wait. Why is everyone dressed in Phillies red? Are we going to opening day?

“It was the worst-kept secret,” McCullough said.

The McCulloughs — like so many others — observed the Phillies’ first game as a holiday. They even decorated their house. And every year, the father would go into school armed with an excuse for his kids to leave early. The kids stopped falling for those early spring dentist appointments. But that was the tradition.

That’s why this Thursday won’t be the same for the McCulloughs as it will be the first opening day since John McCullough, the Archbishop Carroll High junior better known as “John the Cool,” died a week after his 17th birthday.

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John the Cool — the nickname stuck ever since he signed it on a letter to Santa — loved the Phils. He owned every cap, knew every walk-up song, kept score, memorized odd stats, refused to leave a game early, used “Dancing On My Own” as his ring tone, and got a Garrett Stubbs jersey for Christmas.

John the Cool didn’t miss a pitch as he stayed home if the Phils were on or forced his parents to take him to dinner at a bar if they were on Apple TV.

He loved the Phillies just as rabidly as any of the 46,000 fans who will celebrate a new season on Thursday afternoon. The game is sold out. But there will be a seat for John the Cool.

“We have four tickets,” his father said. “One for John.”

There are a few Wiffle balls scattered in the McCulloughs’ backyard in Roxborough.

“They’re just going to stay where they are,” Shawn McCullough said.

John the Cool went to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in November after suffering a cardiac event on his birthday. He was a boy with everything in front of him: varsity baseball, high school graduation, and a new Phillies season after being crushed last October.

John the Cool woke up in the hospital and asked his parents if the Phils made any trades.

He then remembered that his baseball coach told the players that they couldn’t miss two training sessions. John the Cool told his parents to call the coach.

“He said, ‘Coach Pat won’t let me come back,’” said Nina, his mother. “And I’m like, ‘You’re lying in a hospital bed.’”

John the Cool might not have been the star of the teams he played for, but he was always a great teammate. He didn’t pitch, but he would loosen his arm if his team needed a pitcher. He had fun even when he was on the bench. Maybe it’s fitting, Nina said, that Stubbs was his guy. John the Cool never wanted to miss a practice.

“That’s what he was thinking about while he was in the hospital,” Carroll coach Pat Dunn said.

John the Cool used to come to practice in a Phillies jersey, which Dunn said was actually rare. Most of the kids on his team love to play baseball, but John the Cool loved baseball.

“Most of these kids probably never watched a full baseball game,” Dunn said. “Here he is. He’s a big, tall kid and you see his jersey. You’re like ‘OK.’ Then you talk to him and he knows stats and situations. He loved the game. He understood the importance of working a count and understood the game. That came from going to games and watching games with his family. They sat around every night and watched the Phillies.”

John the Cool learned to love the Phillies just like his father learned to love the Phillies. Their love for the team, just like it is for others, is generational. It meant everything, Shawn McCullough said, to raise his son a Phils fan.

His parents like to say that John the Cool was at Game 5 of the 2008 World Series — both parts — 10 days before he was born.

“He had the warmest seat in the house,” Nina said.

The McCulloughs went regularly to Citizens Bank Park and traveled to other ballparks. Every member of the family — Mom, Dad, John the Cool, and sister Sophia — had a cardboard cutout in the stands during the pandemic season, and Bryce Harper even hit John the Cool with a homer.

They were out to eat in New York City a few years ago when John the Cool made sure to wear his finest attire: Eagles jersey, Phillies hat. John the Cool repped Philly wherever he went.

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“It’s just wild how much he loved baseball. I would have defined myself as a diehard. But he was more of a fan than I am,” Shawn said. “He lived baseball. He lived Phillies baseball.”

The thing that truly made John cool, his parents said, was his ability to not care what others thought. He liked what he liked. And he loved Philly sports.

“He wasn’t your typical teenager,” Nina said. “He was just himself and he didn’t care. If you didn’t like it? OK, I’m just not going to hang out with you. That’s your problem, not mine.”

Shawn, a Philadelphia firefighter, rushed home from the station in October 2022 to watch Game 5 of the NLCS with his son. It was bedlam in Roxborough when Harper hit that homer.

“I just pushed him. He was screaming,” Shawn said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

The McCulloughs hang a Chase Utley banner — it used to hang on a Center City light post — outside their house before opening day and drape red, white, and blue bunting under the window. The fire hydrant out front is painted like the Phanatic and there are even decorations inside.

“We have a Phanatic light,” Nina said.

Shawn loves the Phillies so much that he hopes they never win another World Series. Because that would mean his son didn’t get to see it. He is not sure how he’ll be without his son this season at Citizens Bank Park. Even watching spring training games proved difficult.

“The new norm is either you were just crying, you’re currently crying, or you’re going to cry in a short while,” said Nina.

Every piece of Phillies minutia this winter was a reminder of John the Cool. His father said John the Cool would have loved the return of J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber, but he would have liked to ask him about Adolis Garcia. Shawn looked for his son when he came home from work the day Johan Rojas tested positive for PEDs.

It was the little things — playing Immaculate Grid, a random spring training game against the Pirates, and those Wiffle balls in the yard — that reminded you that John the Cool was gone.

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“He was always next to me on my right and all I had to do was this,” Shawn said, raising his hand. “And I would get a fist bump.”

The McCulloughs weren’t sure what to do on Thursday. Archbishop Carroll’s ring Mass is at 6:30 p.m. and John the Cool picked out his Class of 2027 ring.

But it’s opening day. For the McCulloughs, it’s a holiday. They can’t make the ring Mass. They have a dentist’s appointment.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Shawn said. “It’s going to be hard. But I know there’s no other place where he would want to be. He wouldn’t want to be at that ring Mass. He wants to be at Citizens Bank Park. As important as a milestone as that would be, the boy always loved the Phillies.”