Lester fires no-no; Left-hander dominates Royals.

Byline: Bill Ballou

BOSTON - In the end, all that stood between Jon Lester and history was the immortal Alberto Callaspo.

Lester won that battle like Great Britain won the Falkland Islands War, chiseling his name into the books with the likes of Cy Young, Smoky Joe Wood, Derek Lowe, Mel Parnell and even Matt Young. Lester beat Callaspo and the rest of the Kansas City Royals last night, 7-0, by throwing his first no-hitter and the 19th in club history.

That's if you count Young's eight-inning, no-hit effort, in a 2-1 loss in Cleveland on April 12, 1992.

It was Lester's third win of the season, and a crowning achievement considering that less than two years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer.

"It was a long road," Lester said in his classic, understated way. "I'm just glad that I'm here at this moment right now, and in five days I'll go out and pitch again."

Lester struck out Callaspo to end the game, but a half-hour afterward, said he could barely recall the at-bat. For a pitcher whose career had consisted of many games where he was out after five or six innings, he was able to throw a career-high 130 pitches and save some of the hardest ones for last.

"I had more adrenaline going in the ninth inning than I did in the first inning," he said, "which I guess is normal for that situation. It was great."

Lester was never in any real trouble. He walked just two and struck out nine. The closest the Royals came to a hit was in the fourth when, with two out, Jose Guillen dumped a looper into shallow right-center field. Jacoby Ellsbury closed on the ball quickly and caught it with a diving backhand stab.

"He got a good jump on it," Lester said. "He didn't start back, he came right in. He made a great catch, and he's been doing that all year."

"In about the fourth inning," manager Terry Francona said, "(pitching coach) John Farrell and I were talking and commenting on how he was going back and forth, up and down, changing speeds, working quick, attacking the zone, but at different eye levels, different speeds, different planes. It was good. He got into a pretty good flow."

Not long after Callaspo swung and missed for the final out, Lester got together with Francona for a brief, and emotional, chat.

"With everything I've been through," Lester said, "he's been like a second dad to me. Just being able to talk to him, not as a manager, but as a friend - he cares a lot about his players."

Francona, who spent the morning in Philadelphia at his son Nick's graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, said: "I felt like my son graduated, and my son threw a no-hitter. It couldn't happen to a better kid. It's probably selfish on my part to even say something like that, but I think it's obvious how we feel about this kid."

Neither Lester nor Francona are superstitious, or so they said.

"The last three innings," Francona said, "I didn't do anything different. My shoe was falling off, and I wouldn't even tie it."

"I knew about it," Lester said, "in the sixth, seventh, eighth innings. In the ninth, I walked the leadoff man on five pitches, then kind of stepped back."

No one in the Boston dugout uttered the magic words "no-hitter," Lester said, but neither was he avoided like he had mad cow disease, either. Teammates didn't initiate the conversations, but Lester talked with them.

The no-hitter was the first by a Boston pitcher since Clay Buchholz's last Sept. 1. No other pitcher in the majors threw one in the interim, so it was the first time two pitchers from the same team threw no-hitters without another one in between since Nolan Ryan did it for the Angels on Sept. 28, 1974, and June 1, 1975.

It was the first no-hitter by a Red Sox lefty at Fenway Park in more than 50 years - since Mel Parnell's on July 14, 1956. It was the first complete-game, no-hit effort by a Sox lefty since 1992, when Young threw that one in Cleveland, but he threw only eight innings, which disqualifies it as an official no-hitter.

Boston scored five runs in the third inning to take a big early lead, which made Lester's job much easier. The Sox added two more runs in the sixth on Varitek's home run into the right field corner.

Lester pitched seven perfect innings out of his nine, and at one point retired 20 batters in a row. He walked Billy Butler in the second and Esteban German in the ninth. It eventually came down to Callaspo and him, and the Kansas City second baseman never had a chance.

NAME: BOSTON RED SOX 

ART: PHOTOS

PHOTOG: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CUTLINE: (1) Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester embraces catcher Jason Varitek after throwing a no-hitter against Kansas City. (2) Jon Lester is congratulated by teammates after pitching a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals.