If you’re a baseball fan, you may already know about Matt Szczur. If you’re a college football fan, you may already know about Matt Szczur. But you will soon find out why he is quickly becoming everyone’s favorite Chicago Cubs outfielder.
You have to go all the way back to his Freshman year at Villanova University, to find the origins of his incredible story. During that Freshman year, Head Football Coach Andy Talley ran his donation drive for Be The Match, the national bone marrow registry. Matt signed up and proceeded to take a couple of “cheek swabs” to donate samples for his 1-in-80,000 chance of being a match for someone in need.
Fast forward to 2009. He received word that he was a match. All he knew was that it was a young girl who was in desperate need and he had a once-in-a-lifetime chance of saving her life.
With the MLB draft a month away, he underwent a three-hour procedure at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia to remove his healthy bone marrow. It was an exhausting procedure, but that mattered not to Szczur. He wasn’t sure about the side effects of neupogen, a drug he took to increase blood-stem cells, but that wasn’t a deterrent. His spleen could have ruptured but that wasn’t a problem.
(Photo by John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune / ESPN)
This was about more than himself and baseball.
His amazing journey has been documented by ESPN and E:60. And now, 6 years later, Matt was able to reconnect again with the little girl’s life he saved.
Meet Anastasia Olkhovsky and her family. They have endured a lot over the course of recent years and their story is one that is both emotional as well as inspirational.
Click here to watch The Match. Please type in the password “Szczur” (with a capital S) to gain access to the video.
“You can only do so much in baseball. You can only hit the ball so far. You can only throw the ball so hard. To be able to make a difference in not only your life, but someone else’s life and their family, is huge. And I feel that’s my greatest accomplishment so far.” – Matt Szczur