"Utopia - that which is not"

Jon Lester now has something in common with Mike Lowell when Lester became the 21st player to win the Tony Conigliaro Award.

The award is given, each year, to the player that overcomes the most adversity. In 1999, while with the Florida Marlins, Lowell won the award after his battle with testicular cancer. Eight years later Lester won the award after his battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

The Tony Conigliaro Award is one of best awards given by baseball writers because it adds a human element to the game. You are not talking about statistics or what a player brings to a team, instead you are talking about overcoming adversity and doing things people never thought was possible. And that is exactly what both Lester and Lowell did.

Lester and Lowell are not the only people who have received the award. Former Red Sox outfielder Curtis Pride, who became deaf as an infant, received the award in 1996. Former Red Sox pitcher Jason Johnson did not let his Type I diabetes stop him from his dream of playing Major League Ball. Jim Eisenreich, Jim Mecir and Freddy Sanchez overcame their birth defects - Tourette's Syndrome and clubfoot - to play Major League Baseball.

But there is one player who overcame the most difficult challenge and inspired others like him that they can achieve their goals no matter the difficulty. The player is Jim Abbott, the left-handed pitcher born without a right hand and threw a no-hitter for the Yankees in 1993. Abbott has inspired others who thought they would never play a sport due to possible physical limitations, including this man. Click this link for story. (He also ran the Baltimore Marathon in October and came in, in 3 hours; making the limit to run the Boston Marathon in April.)