Mason Hooker wished upon a star. His wish came true.
At age 3, Mason was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He was a brave but scared little boy, obsessed with baseball and, especially, Rockies icon Todd Helton.
“Baseball helped me think about good things,” Mason said from his home near Grand Junction. “It helped me forget about leukemia.”
It wasn’t easy. Three or four times a month, Mason and his mom, Michelle, traveled four hours across the mountains for Mason’s treatments at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora. The rounds of chemotherapy, infusions and spinal taps took their toll.
Mason needed something magical to happen.
Thanks to Helton, the Rockies, and Make-A-Wish Colorado, it did.
In August 2015, when he was 5 and still battling his disease, Mason spent an hour playing baseball with Helton at Coors Field.
“It was cool,” remembered Mason, now a teenager. Loquacious he is not.
This summer, still obsessed with baseball, Mason made a pilgrimage to Cooperstown, N.Y., to see Helton inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Accompanied by his grandparents, Patrick and Ingrid Hooker, Mason found a perfect spot to watch the Parade of Legends on Main Street on a hot Saturday afternoon. Wearing his white, pinstriped Rockies No. 17 Helton jersey, he cheered on Helton.
“I don’t know if he saw me or not,” Mason said. “There were a lot of people.”
On Sunday, Mason saw his hero inducted into the Hall and heard him deliver a heartfelt speech. But the best was yet to come.
Mason and Helton reunited Monday during an autograph event in downtown Cooperstown.
“Yeah, he remembered me,” Mason said. “We talked about how I was all healthy now and what grade I was going into. And we talked about golfing.”
Mason is an incoming freshman at Fruita Monument High School. He wants to play golf and baseball. This summer he played for the Junction Jets, a competitive travel team. He played mostly right field, second base and catcher.
“The coach liked Mason because he’s a universal player,” Michelle said. “Mason will play anywhere.”
Mason claims to have been a Helton fan since he was 2 when he saw him play in a Cactus League game during spring training.
“I liked first base and he was a good first baseman,” Mason said.
In early 2015, Mason received a Make-A-Wish opportunity.
“He said his wish was to play baseball with Todd Helton,” said his dad, John. “Getting celebrity wishes can be complicated. But playing baseball with Todd was always what Mason wanted. He never wavered.”
Mason first met Helton, if only briefly, when he visited the Western Slope for an event with the Grand Junction Rockies, Colorado’s rookie league affiliate at the time. John got a call from the CEO of the hospital where he worked, telling him to bring Mason to the minor league ballpark for a chance to meet Helton.
Mason met his idol and got some autographs, including on a jersey Mason has framed and hanging in his bedroom.
The Hookers had tried for quite a while to make Mason’s Make-A-Wish dream come true.At the Grand Junction event, Michelle told Helton about Mason.
“He said, ‘Let’s make that happen,’” Michelle recalled.
“Todd was so nice and gracious that day,” John said. “As professional athletes go, he was so down to earth.”
Still, the Hookers weren’t sure Mason’s wish would ever be granted. But about two weeks later, the plans were in place.
The Rockies provided a hotel for the family, and they rode to Coors Field in a limousine. Helton, along with former Rockies outfielder Cory Sullivan and members of Make-A-Wish Colorado, greeted the family.
The Hookers toured the ballpark, including the Rockies clubhouse, and did some souvenir shopping. Mason and his older brother, Jack, and their parents received personalized No. 17 Rockies jerseys with the name Hooker on the back.
But the best part of the day came when Mason and Jack took the field with Helton and Sullivan.
Helton had retired at the end of the 2013 season, after 17 years with the Rockies. But, Michelle recalled with a chuckle, “Mason’s thought was, ‘I’m going to bring him out of retirement.’”
Helton and Mason played catch, and Helton pitched batting practice. The 5-year-old Mason managed to get some wood on the ball, telling his grandfather he hit a triple.
“My highlight of that day was Todd coaching him up to tell him how to play first base. It was so cute,” Michelle said.
“And it was incredibly moving. Baseball pretty much got Mason through all of those treatments. He’d played baseball — indoors and outdoors. He was in a lot of pain initially. We would play catch with him sitting on the couch or he’d be hitting inside the house. We would go to Rockies games whenever we could.”
Mason is now in excellent health. Following three and a half years of treatment, he’s technically been in remission since July 2013. He was discharged as a patient from Children’s Hospital in July 2023, after 10 years in the clear.
He figures he and Helton are now lifelong buddies. After all, the photo of Mason and Helton together at the Hall of Fame is now the screensaver on Mason’s phone. They’ve even swapped phone numbers.
“He’s a good guy, a really nice guy,” Mason said. “And I got to play baseball with him at Coors Field.”
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