After an outfield collision left him paralyzed, every gain in rehab is a big win for A's Ryan Lasko

WEST ORANGE, N.J. (AP) — Ryan Lasko threads his left middle finger through a loop on his left sneaker. His face reddens as he finds the strength to slowly pull the leg across his body to the opposite side of a training table. He is spent.

Those legs that once powered Lasko to track down falling line drives as a top baseball prospect for the Athletics now have to be lifted by hand. He practices again and again with all the energy he can muster, mastering skills that will allow him to move from bed to wheelchair and back again.

“That’s a day in the life right there,” the 24-year-old said. “It’s very strenuous.”

Months ago, Lasko was a promising outfielder on a path he hoped would one day make him a major leaguer — a 2023 second-round draft pick who had established himself in Double-A ball. Speed and defense were his greatest assets. Baseball America described how he “gets to balls through sheer will and occasional disregard for his body as he crashes into the outfield wall or makes diving catches.”

Everything changed in an instant on June 30, on one hustle play he had made hundreds of times. Lasko, playing center field for the A's Midland team in a road game at Frisco, Texas, sprinted toward the ball as right fielder Devin Taylor did the same. Their heads crashed when both went diving trying to make the catch.

Taylor quickly got up, Lasko did not. His terrified parents, Patti and James, and girlfriend, Alli Graff, were in the stands watching.

Lasko left on a stretcher.

Doctors soon found he had fractured the C6 and C7 vertebrae in his neck, paralyzing him. Lasko needed emergency surgery for spinal decompression and stabilization. Then, a neck brace for a few months.

The injury left Lasko a tetraplegic, meaning he lost motor or sensory function in all four limbs and his torso. The 5-foot-11, 190-pound athlete known for going all-out on the field spent more than two weeks in the hospital before being flown home to New Jersey, lying on a stretcher for 3½ hours with his mom and Graff by his side.

Lasko has rewatched the collision, heartbroken his family had to see it. Still, he wouldn’t change a thing — “100 times out of 100,” he insists, he’d pursue that ball the very same way.

“I think that’s the part that made it worse for me, because they saw it in person," Lasko told The Associated Press in his first interview since the accident. “Because I think everyone’s just used to me getting up, because I’ve thrown my body around on a baseball field and ran into walls and gotten right back up. ...”

"So I think that was a quick indicator to everyone that I wasn’t OK, because they’re so used to seeing me get up.”

What followed has been the most daunting stretch of his young life.

For two months at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, Lasko performed hundreds of repetitions — such as reaching right hand under left knee to sit himself up — in order to accomplish functional tasks on his own.

Lasko has had to come to grips with the fact he must start from scratch relearning everything, while facing the reality that his life may never be the same.

“I kind of explained it a lot as like a death, that’s what it feels like to me,” he said. “So I feel like I’ve gone through the whole grieving process. Since I've gotten here I’m still kind of navigating that mentally, but I’m in a lot better spirits now, more so because I’ve kind of adjusted to this lifestyle more."

"And I don’t really have a choice to do anything else, so I think that’s what keeps me going.”

Any feeling he gets in his legs or feet these days, Lasko calls “big wins.” When he arrived at Kessler on July 16 and mentioned “small wins,” staff members challenged him to consider them major victories.

While encouraging, those tingles and twinges aren’t necessarily signs he will fully recover.

Outfield collisions with devastating results are rare in baseball, and the Kessler team isn’t accustomed to seeing top-tier athletes from any sport come through the doors. The facility is about 30 miles from where Lasko starred at Rutgers University before being drafted.

Dr. Jeremiah Nieves, a physical medicine rehabilitation doctor with a subspecialty in spinal cord injury, has monitored Lasko each step of the way and believes he's made large strides in a short period because of his sports background.

“He’s made tremendous progress. This is just the early phase. I have a ton of optimism for him but that has to be tempered with a little realism,” Nieves said.

“As we know he’s an elite athlete. That started him off in a different place compared to most folks. ... He’s continued to progress faster than most folks. By no means are things easy for him but you see that elite athlete (in him) every day.”

Among the things Lasko has trained himself to do is using a board to move from his wheelchair to a seat or bed.

“They’re not the easiest skills to learn,” said physical therapist Daniel Gabrielli.

Lasko's box of baseball equipment and clothing from Texas recently arrived at his parents’ home, and when his mother opened it and saw the first jersey, she immediately began to cry. She moved the box to the basement, out of sight to be sorted another day.

“It’s a loss, absolutely. I feel the loss, my husband feels the loss, uncertainty for his future,” Patti Lasko said of the dream her son had since he was 8 years old.

Then she added: “He’s a very determined young man, always has been, he has never accepted I can’t do it or you’re not good enough, he’s always proved everybody wrong.

"Every single time.”

Lasko has reassured his teammate there’s no blame for what happened. In the ICU at the Texas hospital, he and Taylor spent time together and “embraced each other as friends more than teammates, and family,” Lasko said.

“He felt a lot of guilt, but I had to keep reassuring him that it’s not his fault,” Lasko said. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

The A’s are grateful for the support Lasko has received, from the night of the injury thanks to prompt assistance from the Texas Rangers’ medical personnel, to staff throughout the organization’s farm system. Costs for Lasko’s medical care surrounding the work-related injury will be covered under Major League Baseball’s insurance program for the rest of his life.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Lasko said. “It’s amazing how in only two months I feel more like myself again. ... I feel like, I wouldn’t say back to the person I was, but I’m getting close.”

Lasko's girlfriend slept on a mattress next to his hospital bed every night at Kessler. Graff moved to Texas to be with him a couple of months before the injury after a flexible boss allowed her to work remotely.

“I told her to leave a bunch and she won’t leave,” Lasko said. “So to have that, I remind her a lot I couldn’t have made the progress without her. … She is special, she really is. I’m very lucky.”

They consider this challenging time a mere roadblock.

“I would do absolutely anything,” said Graff, 23. “He doesn’t have to go through any of it alone."

Graff took part in Kessler's training for care partners, to assist in Lasko's daily life but also help empower him to navigate the process of regaining his independence.

That, he will tell you on repeat, is the No. 1 goal — to become as independent as possible. It started with relearning basic tasks like brushing his teeth, opening a water bottle or putting on socks and shoes.

Graff calls this their “new normal.”

In a tender moment, she asked him to tame one of his blonde curls as they sat on the Kessler patio. Lasko was waiting to get a haircut until he no longer needed the neck brace post-operation.

“I hate it,” he said.

“We’re having a bonfire," Graff said of the moment it's off for good.

“That's our plan,” Lasko said, to which she offered those same words.

“That’s our plan.”

Lasko receives dozens of text messages and greetings each day.

On one wall in his room at Kessler hung cards and well wishes from friends, family and fans. He has heard from people around the world, including old coaches and teammates.

Lasko plans to return to Rutgers in the spring to finish his final two semesters toward a degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology.

He always knew baseball wouldn’t last forever, yet he certainly didn’t bargain for it to be taken from him this way.

“It’s difficult to see it fade away, but I’m still holding onto it, that maybe one day I can get back to that.”

Later, though, he added: “I can do more with my life now.”

He wants to focus on family, on Graff, and their planned trips to Disney World and Nashville, Tennessee.

Lasko's daily physical and occupational therapy sessions at Kessler ran about three hours, approximately the same as a typical game, and he believes the grind of being a ballplayer — weightlifting, batting practice, studying videos — helped him handle it all.

“It’s just how I’m wired, it doesn’t make sense for me to not go through with something,” he said.

"I’ve done hard things my whole life and this was just the hardest thing.”

He smiles through it all.

“He’s got a great smile,” Graff said.

“I’m trying,” Lasko said. “It’s slow success, it’s very slow success, but I’ll take it.”

Those who have worked with Lasko remain hopeful about his recovery despite the long road ahead.

“This is the gold, this is why we come to work,” Dr. Nieves said.

Still, Lasko has dealt with bad hours and bad days.

He would slip into what he calls a “sorrow state,” dealing with stretches of impatience and feeling sorry for himself — “I can’t control what my body wants to do” — only to have Graff or the Kessler staff come to the rescue.

The waiting game can be an infuriating one.

“I’ve kind of experienced through this the lowest point of my life and somehow come out of that and not let myself kind of fade into just giving up in a sense and being OK with how I am, because I’m not,” he said.

“I’m fully confident that I’m going to walk again. I’m fully confident that I’m going to be able to do a lot of things in life that I was able to do. … I have to stack up the small moments and then that’ll hopefully eventually lead to what I in the end want, which I don’t really know what I want at this point.”

Burning the neck brace will be significant.

“He always had his sense of humor after everything that happened,” Graff said.

If Lasko can inspire someone else — “even if it's just one person” — dealing with a life challenge through his perseverance, he will count that as another big win.

“It’s my choice to either follow it or kind of just drift off into the darkness again,” he said.

On the days he struggled to find any motivation and just wanted to stay in bed, it often came down to tough love.

Many of those same faces who were there for him offered a surprise “clap out” as Lasko scooted himself to exit Kessler in a wheelchair on Sept. 16 — exactly two months to the day after he’d arrived.

“What in the world?” a beaming Lasko said as he emerged, then turned around and added, “I’m getting out of here as fast as I can.”

From now on, Lasko would be coming to Kessler a few days a week to continue his recovery as an outpatient.

The baseball player who had endeared himself to everybody was headed home, another milestone checked off the list.

“Every win,” as he now puts it, “is a big win.”

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