From a young age, New York Yankees pitching prospect James Kaprielian used sports to escape the gruesome reality that his mother, Barbara Kaprielian, was battling breast cancer. When Kaprielian was in the first grade, he remembered his mother undergoing cancer treatment, which for most first graders would be difficult to comprehend.
What Kaprielian could comprehend was, for a while, his mother’s cancer treatments had worked.
Over the course of Barbara’s 14-year battle, she went into remission twice, which allowed Kaprielian to focus on his flourishing baseball career.
While Kaprielian was at UCLA, however, his mother was diagnosed with cancer for the third time.