Lester's no-no

A great story happened in baseball last night. A no hitter is an exciting story no matter who throws it, but add the element of a young pitcher coming back from cancer and it becomes historic. Getting away from baseball for a second, it is great for those that are battling cancer to see something like this accomplished. It can only buoy their internal outlook to see that you can come all of the way back from this dreaded disease. It is also a neat side story that Mike Lowell (another cancer survivor) was about 75 feet away from him to share in the accomplishment. Maybe this will erase the picture of Dave Dravecky's arm breaking on the mound during his comeback from cancer.

Kudos to Terry Francona for not being a slave to the pitch count as well. Too often baseball decisions are reduced to formulas. Being a math person myself, I am an advocate of the use of numbers to inform decisions, but I hate when decisions are pre-determined based on pitch count, or innings allowed in a year, etc. Francona understood the moment that was before him.