Green: Lester adding to his legend

Some ballplayers make the game look easy. They post sub-1.00 ERAs and save 35 games their rookie seasons. They throw no-nos in their second big-league game. They steal 25 bases without getting caught to start their major-league career.

But of course, it only looks easy. Baseball is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. As the line goes, it’s the hard that makes it great.

Watching Jon Lester, we’ve always been able to see the hard. The last three years have left him with a World Series ring, an ERA that is worse than his stuff would lead you to expect, and a very thick medical file. Now we can add a no-hitter to that resume. With such a wealth of experience, it’s easy to forget that he’s only 24 years old. And it’s easy to find morals for his story: Get up. Keep going. Try harder.

In 2005, scouts were still divided over which prospect had better stuff, southpaw Jon Lester or righthander Jonathan Papelbon. Since then, the lefty has been inconsistent, while the righty has been anything but. Lester, three years Pap’s junior, spent his rookie year struggling to the tune of a 4.76 ERA before being diagnosed with cancer. That winter, Lester beat the disease and fought his way back to the big leagues, but he again faltered on the mound, finishing the year with four decisions in 11 starts and a 4.57 ERA. The Red Sox exiled him to the bullpen for the postseason, yet gave him the start for Game 4 of the World Series. On October 28, he delivered five and two-thirds innings of shutout ball to close out Boston’s sweep of the Rockies. He then spent three months as trade bait in the Johan Santana talks.

Up, down, back, forth. Such has been the short career of Jon Lester. This year has been no different. There was fire in his eyes on that chilly night in Colorado, but this spring he stumbled right out of the gate. Yes, we again saw flashes of the pitcher we knew was somewhere inside that long-legged frame; a one-hit effort on April 29 and a three-hit outing on April 2. But there were also games when he walked more guys than he struck out, times he labored to get through the fifth inning.

The watchword of any athlete is consistency — inconsistency is always synonymous with struggle. Lester has fought for three years to find consistency. Monday night was no different. Three hours before making history, Lester began the night with an erratic bullpen session, his wildest of the season. But he took the mound anyway, not quite sure what to expect. Get up. Keep going. Try harder. The outs started to roll and the innings melted away. At long last, Jon Lester made it look easy.