Back in January, David Samson opened up about how his personal life had been thrown into turmoil by his daughter’s battle with brain cancer, saying the strain made it harder to keep up his daily YouTube output. What started as a difficult explanation about balance and routine has now turned into something far more devastating, as Samson has shared perhaps the last and most heartbreaking update about his daughter, Kyra.

“Yesterday, my daughter, Kyra, passed away peacefully after a 9-month and 11-day fight against one of the cruelest diseases I’ve ever seen up close,” Samson shared via X. “She was diagnosed with Brain Cancer, specifically Glioblastoma. I have felt all of your concern and love for these months, and I wasn’t ready to be any more specific than I was. Kyra was a 28-year-old young woman who loved deeply and who was impossible to describe in 280 characters. While her life was stolen from her, she handled these months with courage, poise, and resolve. And all I want is for no family to feel what we feel today. For no young person to suffer the way she did.”

For context: the fans first came to know about his 28-year-old daughter’s illness back in September. It was first after the September 12 episode of “Nothing Personal with David Samson” that he disappeared from his YouTube show for about two weeks. Just when the fans started speculating about him, Samson returned on the September 29 episode and shared about his daughter’s illness. Although at that time he didn’t specify his daughter’s illness or her name.

“There is life before the phone call and life after the phone call, and there is never going back,” Samson said back in September. “You figure out what a new normal can be. You figure it out as quickly as you can when you are surrounded by a sea of verbiage that you don’t understand, scared to your core, trying to gain control of a situation that cannot able to be controlled by anyone under any scenario.”

Then, in November last year, Samson came on live with his head shaved in solidarity with his daughter’s treatment that caused her to go bald. “Hair will exist again. Hair can grow back, no matter where your male pattern balding is. No matter whether it’s thin or thick or a different color, different texture,” Samson added.

So, Samson tried his best as a father, and he fought it out strongly till the end. According to him, it was a 9-month-and-11-day fight, and his wife Cindi, another daughter, Hannah, and son Caleb were all part of this battle. However, for MLB, there’s no dearth of such heartbreaking news.

David Samson’s loss adds another heartbreaking MLB story

Fans had the same dose of heartbreak even before David Samson’s news. Rod Carew, the Hall of Fame player and former MLB coach, lost his 18-year-old daughter, Michelle Carew, to acute myeloid leukemia in 1996. Her highly publicized battle sparked a national surge in bone marrow donor registrations. We hope Samson’s announcement of “The Kyra Fund” would also attract the same enthusiasm to fight Glioblastomas.

“In lieu of flowers, if you are moved to make a memorial gift,” Samson announced. “Please consider ‘The Kyra Fund.” This fund will be used solely to research treatments for Glioblastomas.”

Tug McGraw also faced the same fate as Samson’s daughter. The legendary Phillies and Mets relief pitcher died of glioblastoma in 2004. After his diagnosis, he became a devoted advocate for cancer research, leaving a profound legacy in the baseball community. We would never wish to see such updates coming out of MLB anymore. But David Samson would now need to fight the reality, and we are all with him in this battle.