David Samson reflects on daughter’s sudden illness: ‘I can’t find the meaning right now’

Former MLB executive David Samson was absent from his Nothing Personal show for several weeks in September due to a family crisis. When he returned earlier this week, he explained that one of his daughters had come down with a sudden illness that had consumed his and his family’s lives and caused him to do much self-reflection.

“I’ve been gone for two weeks as my family has been dealing with a critical situation,” Samson said on Monday. “I have a daughter who is seriously ill, and it came out of nowhere. I have been spending the last two weeks trying to figure out how to do the only thing that matters, which is to take care of her and my other children and my family.”

According to the Meadowlark Media podcast host, the harrowing situation began in a flash, and the worry and concern haven’t abated since.

“It started after our show, our last show, on Friday, September 12,” he said. “I got a phone call, and it’s the type of phone call that you just don’t think you’re ever going to get and then all of a sudden it happens. There is life before the phone call and life after the phone call, and there is never going back. 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 is not able to be controlled by anyone under any scenario. You hang on tight to the people you love, to the people you think who love you, to the people who end up loving you, and the people who you realize that what we do for work, and it’s the ultimate joke, is that work, to me, always defined me. Always.”

Samson joined Pablo Torre Finds Out on Friday and provided further reflection on his family’s situation.

“My struggle is that I can’t find the meaning right now,” said Samson. “It doesn’t serve as a distraction to me right now. On September 12th, when I got the call about my daughter, out of nowhere. It was out of nowhere, Pablo. I mean, it was out of nowhere. There is no way to describe what it is when the phone rings and it’s someone calling you who you speak to. Often, But you knew that was a strange time to call because my brain is keeping track of where people are and what people are doing. Because I thought that I would always want to be ready for whatever particular call could come at a particular time. Because I always try to plan for any possible outcome that could possibly happen.”

Samson said that the ordeal taught him how little control he, or anyone else, has over the world around them.

“The irony. I don’t have control over anything. Nothing,” he said. “I can’t make my daughter better. I can’t put my family back together. I can’t put our lives back together. I can’t do anything. I can’t control when the doctors call me back. I can’t control when test results come. I can’t control one thing.”