This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Body 2017 Issue. Subscribe today!
SIX WEEKS IS all. Six weeks in Jameson Taillon's life that somehow felt like both a flash of lightning and an eternity. Six weeks from feeling something foreign in his left testicle to cancer surgery to recovery. Six weeks of panic and isolation and fear and relief. Six weeks.
Taillon is 25 years old, 6-foot-5, sturdy like something that grows from the ground, smart and composed, mature in a way that young men of his station rarely are. He was the second pick of the 2010 draft, the future of the Pirates, eternally destined to be sandwiched between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in baseball's consciousness.