CHICAGO — One of Matt Armstrong’s earliest memories of his son on an athletic field came not on a baseball diamond, but on the gridiron. When Pete Crow-Armstrong was 7, Matt was the head coach of his flag football team in Southern California. Former major league player and manager Gabe Kapler, who also had a son on the team, was Matt’s assistant.

“I think he was my defensive coordinator,” Matt said.

One day after practice, Kapler was throwing a football around to some of the kids.

“There was a moment when Pete ran this crossing route, like five yards up and then he cut and Gabe whipped the ball to him,” Matt said. “He extended his hands and caught it out in front of him and flew up the field. And Gabe looks at me and says, ‘You know that’s not normal, right?'”

Fast-forward about 16 years, and Pete Crow-Armstrong continues to do things that don’t seem normal — though now it’s while manning center field for the Chicago Cubs and batting in the middle of one of the best lineups in Major League Baseball.

The 23-year-old also flashes speed few players possess (his 23 stolen bases rank third in baseball) while providing more power (19 home runs) than his 6-foot, 184-pound frame might suggest. He’s burst onto the scene this season, helping the Cubs into first place in the National League Central. His latest heroics include an improbable diving catch to preserve a one-run lead Tuesday against the Milwaukee Brewers and a laser off Wrigley Field’s right-field scoreboard just a few minutes later that registered at 111.5 mph off the bat. The two moments led to 38,000 fans chanting, “M-V-P! M-V-P!”

Crow-Armstrong’s infectious personality is also a huge part of his appeal for a fan base starving for a star and a league always trying to sell its game. He’s garnered the most All-Star votes of any National League outfielder and fourth most among all players — behind only Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. He connects with the young and old in the stands at Wrigley as well as inside the Cubs’ clubhouse.

He might be the complete package.

“He’s incredibly kind and genuine and full of energy and good with kids,” teammate Dansby Swanson said. “Just seeing him with players or coaches’ kids. He’s so kindhearted and fun towards them.

“Energy is attractive. He’s full of it.”

WHEN YOU TALK to anyone who has known Crow-Armstrong for a while, they’ll tell you the same thing: He’s always been like this. Full of energy and exuberance.

“Always in motion,” his mom, Ashley Crow, said. “And just completely game for anything. He just loves [baseball]. He’s loved it as early as 3.”

Even before turning 3, Crow-Armstrong was hitting baseballs. A T-ball set from an aunt came as a gift for his second birthday — but quickly became obsolete.

“Within a week he had abandoned the tee entirely,” Matt recalled. “He wanted us to throw to him.”

Matt and Ashley were working actors at the time. Both appeared on the television show “Heroes,” and Ashley had played the mom from the movie “Little Big League,” in which her character’s 12-year-old son takes over the Minnesota Twins. But there’s really no line to be drawn from their acting days to their son’s emerging stardom, even with all three ending up in the entertainment industry.

“Everyone expects this Hollywood answer to this question,” Crow-Armstrong told ESPN recently. “Nah, I was outside everyday playing ball. Minimal screen time. I went to set once or twice but other than that I was in the backyard. We had a big backyard.”

Said Ashley: “That backyard was his home. He would wake up in the morning and head right to the backyard.”

Soon, PCA — as he’s commonly referred — would join Sherman Oaks Little League, where Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Flaherty once played. In fact, Flaherty umpired some of Crow-Armstrong’s games.

“He’s a good kid,” Flaherty said before facing Crow-Armstrong recently. “Always has been.”

Flaherty was asked how he planned to get the hot-hitting, third-year player out.

“I’m going to hit him,” Flaherty deadpanned.

Crow-Armstrong went 1-for-3 off Flaherty, but the ball stayed in the ballpark, a victory for pitchers these days. Power wasn’t his trademark growing up anyway. His legs were.

“He’s always run the bases like someone is chasing him,” childhood friend and Cubs minor leaguer Drew Bowser said. “He just kept getting better and better and better. What you’re seeing is not surprising. At least not to me.”

Bowser hit the first home run off PCA, the pitcher. They were 7 years old.

“Oh, I remember it,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Only gave up three home runs in my Little League career and he was one of them. His mom has a video of it.”

Bowser added: “He just stood there and looked at it. I would have been crying.”

As with many kids, it was a time when Crow-Armstrong fell in love with the game. He was asked what comes to mind when he considers his early memories of baseball.

“It’s kind of a corny cinema in a way,” he said. “The dads are drinking beer and all the kids are playing whiffle ball and throwing the football on the field after hours. Just being kids.

“I found so much of myself on a baseball field.”

Eventually, Crow-Armstrong would join the famed Harvard-Westlake high school that Flaherty, New York Yankees pitcher Max Fried and Boston Red Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito had attended. They were all older, but Crow-Armstrong felt their presence.

“They definitely shaped Harvard-Westlake’s baseball program to set it up to get players like myself and make it a baseball recruitment,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I had no business going to Harvard-Westlake, financially or academically. Those guys built that program up.”

The coach at Harvard-Westlake, Jared Halpert, likes to tell a story that illustrates the confidence of his former student.

During a fall league game, the teams were tied heading into the final inning. Crow-Armstrong was in the on-deck circle.

“Being a coach, I told him to stay within himself and that we don’t need anything special,” Halpert recalled in a phone interview. “Just get a good swing off.

“He told me to get away from him — it may have been more colorful — he was going to end the game. First or second pitch he hit a ball over a house in right field.”

Crow-Armstrong remembered that moment: “I think I was nice about it, but yeah I told him, ‘I got this.'”

Many of Halpert’s former players who are now in the big leagues commonly return to the high school to hang out with the current team, including Crow-Armstrong.

“There’s a little bit of a reserve by them,” Halpert said. “No one wants to get out there and compete with the high school kids. Nothing to gain. But Pete just doesn’t care about that. He’s out there every day when he comes back here. He’s taking reps and getting after it with these high school kids. He doesn’t care how he looks.

“When you talk about little kids playing baseball, this is the epitome of that. It’s a business, but this kid is in love with the game. That’s what he’s showing everybody right now.”

LOOKING BACK NOW, Jed Hoyer, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations, feels fortunate. A shoulder injury — along with the COVID pandemic — might be the reason Crow-Armstrong is currently manning center field for Hoyer’s team and not the New York Mets.

After a successful career at Harvard-Westlake, PCA was drafted 19^th by the Mets in 2020. He began his pro career the following season but lasted only six games due to a shoulder injury which required surgery. It was during his recovery that summer when he was traded to the Cubs in a deal headlined by shortstop Javier Baez.

“That year, we had a bunch of rentals and other executives were not willing to talk about their top prospects at Double-A and above,” Hoyer said. “So we dipped down to Single-A.”

Chicago was in the midst of stripping apart its championship core from the previous decade, and Hoyer had a lot on his plate. Along with the Baez deal, he traded stars Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, hoping he would find a good prospect or two in return. PCA has been the best of them.

“Honestly, we were fortunate he was hurt,” Hoyer said. “Out of sight, out of mind a little bit.”

Crow-Armstrong summed it up this way: “When you’re hurt in the minor leagues, nobody gives a s—. It gave me quiet time to get healthy and go work on my s—.”

Crow-Armstrong worked his way up the Cubs system, hitting 20 home runs and stealing 37 bases in 2023, but it was his defense that opened eyes. Scouts said he was major league ready in the field and the team would eventually agree, bringing him up in 2023 for a 13-game taste of the big leagues.

He didn’t get a hit.

Then last year, Crow-Armstrong’s struggles continued during his first full season with the Cubs, but he eventually figured things out at the plate over the course of the last month, hitting .284 in his final 31 games. Still, the vibe he gave off was about defense and stealing bases.

The same could have been said of PCA early this season — until he arrived in his hometown for a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in mid-April. He was hitting .200 with no home runs after the first game.

Over the course of that series, he found his rhythm at the plate — and everything changed.

“I got back on time,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I was late [to hitting balls] all year leading up to that.”

Since April 13, Crow-Armstrong has a .959 OPS, including all 19 of his home runs and 17 of his stolen bases. And he became an RBI machine, moving up from seventh in the order to hitting leadoff in some games and cleanup in others. With runners in scoring position, he’s hitting .342 and is tied for the league lead with eight home runs.

Crow-Armstrong has also played near flawless center field, tracking down balls with a burst of energy, stealing sure hits off the bat while daring baserunners to test his arm. Like his power, his arm strength is also deceiving, ranking ninth among center fielders. And he leads all outfielders in defensive runs saved.

“He’s playing at as high a level that I’ve seen a center fielder play,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said this week. “We’re 70 games in but how he’s playing it, it’s as good as I’ve seen.”

His offensive and defensive contributions have him surprisingly ahead of Ohtani in fWAR, leading all NL players.

“You don’t know what his ceiling is,” Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona said recently, shaking his head.

Francona’s team has been the recipient of the full Crow-Armstrong experience this season, which includes a game-changing grand slam, 10 RBIs and three stolen bases over the course of six games against the Reds.

“He can do it all,” Francona said. “I hear people say he doesn’t walk and everything, but that’s probably how he’s a good hitter. He’s aggressive. He can beat you with his legs. He can hit the ball out of the ballpark. He can go get the ball in center. He can bunt.

“S—, I hope he does bunt next time against us.”

What’s made Crow-Armstrong stand out more than anything is his ability to hit pitches nobody has any business hitting. According to ESPN Research, he’s hit a pitch the second furthest from the strike zone for a home run this season (8.1 inches above the edge of the strike zone) and the lowest pitch for a home run (5.8 inches below the zone).

“Off the plate, in,” veteran teammate Justin Turner said. “Off the plate, away. A 100 mph on the black away against Hunter Greene. The heater eight inches above the zone against Andrew Heaney. The slider in Milwaukee that almost bounced. The stuff up and in.”

Crow-Armstrong does have a 43% chase rate, second highest among qualified hitters, but has nine extra base hits on pitches outside the zone. He’s a free swinger, with only 14 walks, but continues to do damage on pitcher’s pitches. The comp heard most in the Cubs’ clubhouse when it comes to his bad-ball hitting is Rafael Devers.

“The power in all zones is crazy,” Turner said. “Usually, power guys have a sweet spot. He really doesn’t have a sweet spot. When he’s on time and ready to go, it doesn’t matter where it’s at. He has a chance to drive it out of the yard.”

Said Reds reliever Brent Suter with a shrug: “He’s hitting the ones he’s supposed to hit and hitting the ones he’s not supposed to hit.”

Cubs assistant hitting coach John Mallee has always been a proponent of hitting the ball in the air. He helped coach the 2016 Cubs to a World Series title, which included an MVP award for former Cub Bryant, but he likens PCA to another hitter of his from more than a decade ago.

“I worked with Jose Altuve in Houston,” Mallee said. “He always profiled as a bigger guy, meaning he hit the ball harder than you would think as a smaller player. Pete also profiles as a big guy, but he’s a little guy [frame-wise] with speed.

“Why would you want to hit it on the ground? They stand where you hit it for the most part. He naturally gets it in the air.”

SPEED AND POWER are what makes Crow-Armstrong stand out on the field, and now they’ve helped make him one of the most popular players in Chicago, regardless of sport.

His jerseys already litter Wrigley Field and, according to league data, he’s a hit on social media, too, ranking sixth among all players in follower growth percentage on Instagram this season. For a league in search of superstars, MLB sees Crow-Armstrong as the next big thing.

“We are huge fans of PCA on and off the field,” said EJ Aguado, MLB vice president of player engagement and celebrity relations. “He’s one of the great personalities in the game, and his on-field performance speaks for itself. We’ve been engaged with Pete for some time, going back to his minor league days. We’re also in touch with his team at CAA and the Cubs on some cool upcoming projects to showcase the amazing season he’s having and who he is off the field — stay tuned.”

His charisma and sense of fun was developed at an early age. His dad believes being an only child made him more comfortable around adults, while his mom thinks team sports was his outlet to grow into such a fan favorite.

“He always makes time for people, especially kids,” catcher Carson Kelly said. “True professional but has that kid in him. It’s why the younger generation probably gravitates towards him.”

PCA said: “That’s who I’m here for, kids. I definitely have some kid in me. It’s fun being Uncle Pete. And it’s the coolest feeling when Matt Boyd says his son is cheering me on when he’s watching TV. Or Carson Kelly’s kids.”

The fact it extends to the field is all the better.

“The way he celebrates his teammates,” left fielder Ian Happ said. “You see him after a walk-off running out as the first one out there.

“We have pretty opposite personalities. That makes it fun. Watching him play, there is something about the excitement. It’s good for me to see on a daily basis.”

As everything swirls around him, Crow-Armstrong maintains his daily routine. He’s recently started hitting off a tee — perhaps for the first time since he was a 2-year-old using his aunt’s birthday gift — then joins teammates on the infield, taking grounders and helping them turn double plays during pregame practice. Then it’s a word or two for a stadium employee or a couple of young fans whose eyes light up when he walks up to them. Watching his day unfold brings back his mom’s observation: always in motion.

When the game starts, the grass in center field, and the left side of the batter’s box, become his domain. He transforms into PCA.

“It’s just super special I get to do this every day,” Crow-Armstrong said, standing near the Cubs’ dugout. “I know that sounds cliché. All of us are replaceable. People’s careers as fans go on a lot longer than us as players. This is my space and that’s my center field, but it’s also theirs. It was theirs first.”