Get an 'excerpt' of child page content

Hi I’ve made a custom template page on an install where it grabs the title and thumbnail of the child pages and displays them in a list (Its players of a cricket team). So TEAM is displaying all the sub pages, which are of course the players.

I was wondering if there is a page ‘excerpt’ tag in wordpress? I can pull the content using

<?php echo $page->post_content ?>

but that brings back ALL the content from the child page which is not what I want. I just want a few lines from each one.

Basically I’m looking to be able to put a character limit on

<?php echo $page->post_content ?>

If anyone can help that would be ace! Thanks ??