With all that’s gone wrong in the sports world this past month — Spygate reaching its height, the euthanizing of Eight Belles on the track at the Kentucky Derby — it seems fitting for a national feel-good story to emerge. And it has, in the form of Jon Lester.

Lester is a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who entered the league in 2006 as a multi-tooled, left-handed starter. He was in the midst of a very good rookie season when he was sidelined with an injury. But it wasn’t just any ailment: Lester was diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a specific form of the cancerous non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

While Lester’s recovery prospects were, on the whole, good, baseball took a back seat. He did not return to the Red Sox that year, and a timetable for his return was not set. His career stood a very good chance of ending before it really started.

But he battled back, and as his disease entered remission, began to throw again. He started 2007 in minor league Class A but was so successful in his rehab outings that he made it back to the majors by late July. He helped the Red Sox wrap up their seventh championship with a strong outing in the final game of the World Series, allowing only three hits and no runs in over five innings to earn the win.

That he was able to make such an authoritative recovery was, in itself, a minor miracle. It was taken to new heights last night, when, at age 24, Lester threw the first no-hitter of his career.

The young southpaw survival story was simply spectacular. Lester struck out nine batters and gave up only two walks as Boston downed Kansas City, 7-0.

It is the current apex to a wonderful story of revival and determination, of faith and perseverance. It is as much about baseball as it as about human life and experience. And it’s something that supporters of all teams can relish.

As sports fans, we are generally divided based on our team allegiances: the Cowboys will always loathe the Redskins; Cal will hate Stanford and, in the case of baseball, the Yankees will despise the Red Sox.

But there are times when everyone will stand in unison and applaud — this is one of them. And as a devotee of the Bronx Bombers, I can say that this may be the first game in my life when I haven’t been angry over a Red Sox win — even if it does drop my team an extra half-game behind the division leaders. On a human level, it’s hard not to recognize the feat and the monstrous obstacle that had to be defeated to attain it. Our ties of local allegiance mean nothing in times like these.

We can celebrate Lester’s accomplishment together; indeed, we should. Far too often, the most publicized stories are of the most reprehensible and defaming nature. Baseball is still reeling from an unresolved steroids era, and the names that permeate the news cycles aren’t guys like Lester — they’re divisive figures like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Josh Hamilton and Rick Ankiel’s success stories last season after recovering from a serious bout with drugs and a sudden fall from stardom, respectively, captured the hearts of baseball fans. But they offered just a temporary reprieve from the scandal du jour, as Ankiel himself became mired in a mini-HGH scandal.

But Lester’s tale is here to stay, and his story is still growing. Who knows where it might take him? He could pitch another 20 years, win more championships and awards and hurl more no-hitters. His legend could grow and grow. But even if he decides to hang up his cleats tomorrow, he will still be an inspiration to us all.

To cancer sufferers, their families and the rest of us, he is the model of a never-give-up attitude, even when faced with the worst odds.

That is something we can all rally behind.

Wyndam Makowsky is a freshman who shows a great deal of pluck in writing a column about a Boston player while his Yankees are in last place. Congratulate him on his perspective at makowsky@stanford.edu.