It’s hard to put into words what it meant for Adrian Gerardo to see the look on his son Christopher’s face when Corbin Carroll walked into his room at the Barrow Neurological Institute recently.
“I hadn’t seen that smile in a long time,” Adrian said.
Christopher, a senior at Trevor Browne High School in Phoenix, has always loved baseball and for him playing in college was a dream he was doggedly pursuing before tragedy struck on Oct. 13.
While heading back to Phoenix following a baseball showcase event in Tucson, Christopher was involved in a car accident and, despite numerous surgeries, still does not have movement below his chest.
A GoFundMe page was started to help with some of his medical expenses.
Unbeknownst to Adrian and Christopher, a number of his teammates and Trevor Browne school officials reached out to the Diamondbacks to see if Carroll might be able to pay Christopher a visit as he goes through his neuro rehab.
Debbie Castaldo, the Diamondbacks’ senior vice president of community impact, shared some of the letters with Carroll.
“I saw what was written and I said, ‘This is definitely something we need to make happen,’” Carroll said.
Adrian got a heads up that Carroll was coming, but Christopher, who was tired after a physical therapy session, was told only that he had a special visitor.
“Oh man, you should’ve seen the look on his face,” Adrian said. “It meant everything for me to see him like that.”
Adrian figured it would be a quick visit with Carroll signing a few autographs, and that would’ve been enough.
“He was absolutely in shock,” Castaldo said of Christopher’s first reaction to Carroll. “It took him a minute to actually say anything. And then, I mean, his, you could see his brain just start rolling. And it was so much fun. He asked Corbin all about certain games and certain at-bats and who his favorite teammate was and his favorite stadium to play in. I mean, the kid had a million questions and was just super knowledgeable about D-backs baseball.”
Castaldo and the Diamondbacks had a couple of other surprises for Christopher.
One was an iPad so that he could keep up with his schoolwork — as well as the Diamondbacks. Then, they told Christopher that he would not have to worry about paying for college, because he was going to be a one of the organization’s D-backs Scholars, meaning his tuition would be covered.
“I told him we will make sure you have whatever resources you need to go to college,” Castaldo said. “And then I started to cry, then Corbin started to cry, then the dad and the son started crying.”
“That was super powerful,” Carroll said. “It was just really cool to be a part of kind of seeing that and his reaction. Honestly, that was more impactful than anything I did.”
After hearing Christopher say that if he wasn’t able to make it as a baseball player, he had hoped to get into a baseball front office, Carroll told him about Cory Hahn. Hahn was a standout baseball player who suffered a C-5 spinal cord injury while sliding into second base during his third game as a freshman at Arizona State University in 2011.
He went on to get his degree at ASU and is now a key part of the Diamondbacks’ baseball operations department.
“I told him that Cory is a very valuable member of the front office,” Carroll said. “When [Christopher] said he hoped to be involved in baseball, it was pretty cool to be able to tell him about Cory and that, truthfully, none of his dreams have to change.”
