Schwarber inspired by ailing boy, 10
chicago» Kyle Schwarber signed a baseball for Campbell Faulkner, and Faulkner gave Schwarber a green wristband. Twin acts of kindness, and a friendship was born.
The slugger with the big Ohio heart, and the sunny boy with a life-threatening illness. A bond that made each of them better.
Some 1,700 miles away from Wrigley Field, Faulkner and his family are soaking up every moment of Schwarber’s comeback from a major knee injury. The 10-year-old Faulkner — “If you ask him, he’s two hands,” his mother Carrie says — stays up to watch his buddy in the World Series, and Schwarber proudly wears his Campbell’s Crew wristband while he tries to help the Chicago Cubs to their first championship since 1908.
“He’s a kid who can put a smile on my face,” Schwarber said.
Faulkner has a rare mitochondrial disease. His body doesn’t know how to use food and oxygen properly.
Doctors knew something was wrong with Faulkner just days after he was born. The youngest of Carrie and Shane Faulkner’s four children never cried and was never hungry.
On Day 4, he was labeled “failure to thrive,” Carrie Faulkner said. He got his first feeding tube in his stomach when he was 4, and a second tube at 7.
“On the outside he looks perfect,” Carrie Faulkner said in a phone interview. “On the inside, it’s just a train wreck, it’s a disaster in there.”
So when Carrie Faulkner heard about what Schwarber said after one of the biggest games of his life, she just lost it. Moments after Schwarber hit two RBI singles in Chicago’s 5-1 victory over Cleveland in Game 2 on Wednesday night, he was asked about his green wristband, and the son of a retired Ohio police chief jumped on the question like a belt-high fastball.
“Yeah, Campbell Faulkner, he’s a kid that I met down in Arizona. He’s got a rare genetic disease, and I met him my first spring training,” Schwarber said. “Really young, smart kid, and he’s just always got a big smile on his face.” Schwarber kept right on going. “We stay in contact through email. He’s a smart kid, man,” he said. “The kid’s, I think, got an IQ of like a college kid for being so young. That tells you how smart he is. And that’s a person you want to look up to right there.”
A day later, Carrie Faulkner was still floored.
“I don’t even have words,” she said Thursday. “I have tears . ... Oh my heavens what an amazing man to think of my son at that moment.”
For Campbell, it was no big deal. After all, they’re friends. “It made me feel good, and I knew that he was thinking of me,” he said.
Faulkner and Schwarber met last year during spring training. Faulkner was a guest of an organization called Steve’s Dream, which provides tickets to Cubs’ spring training games to families.