AUBURN – Justin Heywood of Auburn had barely finished cheering his Red Sox on Saturday night when his cell phone rang.

He never expected to hear his friend’s voice. Not here.

“How about that first inning?” said Ryan Larochelle, speaking from a phone somewhere in Iraq.

It was nearing 3 a.m. in the desert country where Larochelle, 22-year-old Auburn soldier with the 616th Transportation Company, was watching the World Series with friends.

The call lasted only a minute. Heywood sat at the bar of Thatcher’s Restaurant in the Auburn Mall, smiling broadly as he watched the TV screen and listened to his friend’s voice from the other side of the world.

Such is the stuff of Red Sox luck and lore, where nothing is predictable.

“I have a lot of superstitions,” said the 22-year-old, who works at a Pepsi plant in Augusta.

He grew up watching Roger Clemens pitch. As a Little Leaguer, he learned to stare at the batter and cradle his right hand in his left, just as the Rocket does.

He learned to take comfort in the routine. And, he learned, some activities might tempt fate.

So, he never steps on a ball field’s chalk lines, the ones that divide the fair and the foul. And when the Red Sox began their series Saturday with the St. Louis Cardinals, Heywood refused to wear anything with the team logo on it, though he bought a new Sox T-shirt only minutes before the game started.

“I can’t wear it,” he said a little sadly. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

But so far, the luck seemed to be with him and his team.

In the first inning, the Sox scored four runs and Heywood heard from his friend.

“Say hi’ to my uncle for me,” he asked Larochelle. Heywood’s uncle, Steve Hinson, belongs to the same unit, an Army Reserve group due back early next year.

When he hung up, Heywood’s smile remained.

“I’m shocked,” he said.

Maybe, it’s good omen for the Sox.