You know the old saw about opening day--"Every team is in first place." Today, the Red Sox short-season-A team, the Lowell Spinners, opened their 2001 season with a 4-2 win over the Staten Island Yankees--and who knows? Maybe this really will be the beginning of a magical season for them.

For the parent club, it already is, of a sort. Two winter acquisitions have turned out to be worth their weight in gold for the Red Sox: Hideo Nomo pitched a no hitter in the second game of the season and Manny Ramirez is a contender for the triple crown. Today they went two and a half games up on the second-place Yankees as knuckleballer Tim Wakefield took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against Tampa Bay.

But all Red Sox luck seems to come with some twists and quirks. Take tonight's no hitter for example. In the ninth, a man reached on an error, then a broken bat single broke up the no hit bid, and by the time the inning, and the game, were over, the Devil Rays had scored four runs and had the tying run on second. And yet, the Red Sox managed to win, which for the snake bit Bambino-cursed Sox is a kind of good-luck miracle in and of itself.

Up in Lowell, the game had some similar reversals of fate. Short-season-A is the league where you'll find recent draftees getting their very first taste of professional baseball. Some of them have come straight from the College World Series. Others are undrafted free agents. All of them realize they are on one of the lowest rungs of a very tall ladder to the Major Leagues.

The fans realize it, too, but that doesn't stop them from loving their team. When the gates opened an hour before game time, a nine year old girl ran down to the Spinners dugout. I know she was nine because her father, a Spinners season ticket holder who stood next to me, told me she was. "Last year, she knew all the players, all the names," he said. When she came back to us she had an autograph on the back of her ticket stub and she was beaming. "Who did you get?" Dad asked. "I don't know," she replied, "But he was number forty one!" (For the record, that's pitcher Kenny Trapp.)

The Spinners have sold out their last fifty home games (dating back into the 1999 season), and this year could sell out every seat for every game. It's not hard to see why. LaLacheur Park is a beautiful little modern ballyard, with low prices, clean rest rooms, and not a bad seat in the house. With seats at Fenway Park going for $55, who wouldn't consider seeing the Yankees lose for only ten bucks?

Of course, there's no guarantee of who wins or loses. In fact, prior to tonight, the Spinners were 0-3 in home openers at LaLacheur Park, and 1-5 in home openers overall. If that stat kept any fans at home, though, it was hard to tell.

Many in the crowd sported Boston Red Sox caps or jerseys, and many others had Lowell Spinners gear on. I sighted exactly three Yankees fans in the audience who dared to wear their colors. Only one of the three made the trip from New York, the other two were local and had come with friends and family who love the Sox. I asked one mother/daughter pair how they worked out the fact that Mom was a Yankees fan and her daughter was not. The Sox-loving daughter explained it this way: "We love baseball. And I don't love her any less for being a Yankees fan."

The rivalry did not make for the kind of intense, often ugly crowd one finds at Fenway or Yankee Stadium when these two clubs meet. In fact, ugly is one word I could not use to describe anything at LaLacheur Park tonight. The weather was beautiful, the sky reddening and then darkening gradually throughout the evening, the baseball white and small in the lights on every fly ball and every home run. The crowd was mellow, happy, enjoying the between-inning contests like human ring toss, pretzel toss, and Sumo-suit wrestling, and watching the game for what it is--a game. An entertaining game.

But the rivalry is there, under it all. From time to time the PA announcer would update the fans on the progress of both the Red Sox and Yankees major league games. Wakefield's no hitter was in the eighth and the Sox were up 3-0, while the Yankees were losing 6-1 to Detroit. There were cheers throughout the park.

For the players trying to prove themselves in their respective organizations, the rivalry was secondary to their individual worries about their performance. For many of them, it was their first game as professionals. Would the Yankees first round draft pick, John-Ford Griffin, rise to the occasion? Would Red Sox 13th round pick Ryan Brunner, who won the home run contest at the College World Series, make the adjustment to wooden bats? As it turned out, no and yes.

Griffin went 0-for-four with the poor luck to come up with two outs every time he was at the plate, ending four innings and stranding three. Brunner meanwhile launched a huge home run over the right centerfield wall to tie the game at 1-1 in the fourth. Kevin Youkilis hit another one to lead off the 7th to make it a 2-1 game. But with two out in the top of the ninth, Juan Camacho came to the plate and hit a three hundred and two foot shot just barely fair and barely over the wall in right field to tie the game.

Longtime Red Sox fans who were already holding their breath about the Wakefield no hitter, then in the ninth with a 5-0 score, sucked it in even further. Fortunately, pitcher Aaron Sands got the next batter to strike out looking, fooling him on two outside pitches in a row, and that brought the Spinners to bat once more. Just about the time of the Camacho home run, Wakefield suffered an error (Jose Offerman) and then a broken bat single.

But just as the big club's luck had reversed again, with the Sox pulling out a 5-4 win, so it went with the Spinners. Staten Island reliever Brian Strelitz got two quick fly ball outs, and it looked like he would keep his team alive when he induced a grounder to short. Deivi Mendez was either half asleep or taking the easy one for granted because he didn't hustle into position and ended up booting the ball. The runner was safe at first, and that brough the number nine hitter, Alec Porzel to the plate.

Maybe Strelitz took Porzel for granted, too. The lean infielder certainly didn't look like a slugger, and had hit two soft comebackers to the mound and a liner right to second in his previous at bats.

Not this time. About the time Derek Lowe was done giving up runs to the Devil Rays and closed out the ninth inning down in Tampa, Alec Porzel turned on a pitch and sent it down the left field line and over the fence for a game-winning two-run homer. He was greeted at home plate by his entire team, banging him on the helmet just like major leaguers.

It might not have been easy, it might not have been a dominating performance, it might not turn out to be a harbinger of things to come. But a win is a win, and Red Sox fans and Lowell Spinners fans went home happy just the same. If their luck holds out, and the Yankees continue to fall just short, there may be a lot more of that feeling around here in September and October. The Boston Red Sox will face the New York Yankees again in September. Meanwhile, up in Lowell, the NY-Penn League Champs of last year are already one game back, and tomorrow the Spinners will look to make it two.