Lester, displaying an economy of effort absent from his previous seven starts in the big leagues, held the Kansas City Royals to a single hit through eight innings -- a ground-ball single up the middle by Mark Teahen in the second inning. Rookie closer Jonathan Papelbon set the Royals down in order in the ninth to complete the combined one-hitter, a 1-0 Sox win before a sellout crowd of 36,224 sent home in a snappy 2 hours 23 minutes.
``At times it was a little bit of everything, at times it was nothing," Lester said in describing how he went about his business.
One man's nothing is another man's history. By running his record to 5-0, 22-year-old Jonathan Tyler Lester of Puyallup, Wash., became the first Sox rookie lefthander to win his first five decisions. That trumped the debuts of such notable opposite-handers in Sox annals as George Herman Ruth, Melvin Lloyd Parnell, William Francis Lee III, Bruce Vee Hurst, and one Thomas Frederick (Rick) Jones, who in 1976 was the last Sox rookie lefty to win his first four decisions -- then won two more games the rest of his career.
Lester also became the first lefty rookie to start a one-hitter since Billy Rohr, who came within an out of no-hitting the Yankees in the Bronx April 14, 1967 before Elston Howard singled, a moment that can be recited from memory by an entire generation of Sox fans who have ``The Impossible Dream" in their LP collection (``Billy Rohr . . . on the threshold . . . ").
Rohr's glory days, like those of Jones, were few. He won just three games in his major league career and was out of baseball two years after his debut, history's way of warning fans not to get carried away by the early returns. But Lester, a second-round draft pick in 2002, was identified almost immediately as a jewel of the organization -- unlike Papelbon, who appeared nova-like on the scene -- and he has not disappointed.
``I think our whole organization, the fans, everybody was excited to see [Lester] come up to our big club and see what he can do," manager Terry Francona said. ``He jumped right in and has been a huge member of our staff.
