Sports Redux: Let Us Now Praise Jonathan Tyler Lester

Jon Lester doesn't want to be known anymore as the guy who survived cancer. Jon Lester doesn't even want to be known as the kid who no-hit the Royals. Jon Lester, thank you very much, would like to be known as a lights-out pitcher and a cornerstone of the Sox' staff.

And so shall we know him from now on. With the team reeling, losing five in a row and watching the Rays run out to a huge division lead (3 1/2 is huge when you're in second), Lester went into Yankee Stadium and made the Bronx Bombers look silly. As in a complete game, five-hit, 8K, 7-0 shutout. As in the Yanks had a team meeting after the game to figure out if they should continue the season.

The Lester win came at the expense of Andy Pettitte, who Lester says he's modeled himself after (except, you know, the steroid thing). "We have similar stuff - fastball, cutter, changeup, curveball. I watch to see how he handles things. We were lucky to get to him early," said Jon. The Sox didn't clobber Pettitte - three of the six runs they got off him came off sac flies and Jeter throwing errors - but they did what they had to do. Ellsbury's 2-run double was the biggest hit of the night.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi was blunt: "We didn't do anything. We didn't hit. We didn't pitch. We did not play a good game." Life can't be that bad when you've got the Yankees manager saying things like that.

Josh Beckett goes against Darrell Rasner this afternoon. Scoreboard-watchers: the Rays host Kansas City.

Photo by Paul Keleher, from Flickr pictures tagged "Bostonist".