St. Petersburg, Fla. ? The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are determined to turn the team’s “Heart & Hustle” motto into more than just another marketing campaign.

Baseball’s youngest team rallied for a 9-5 season-opening victory over the Detroit Tigers, delivering at least on Tuesday night on a pledge to be more entertaining in 2001.

“I think first impressions leave a big mark. Hopefully, the fans will see how we kept fighting, that we came back and it will one of many more,” said designated hitter Greg Vaughn, whose two-out RBI single snapped an eighth-inning tie and led to three more runs.

“I don’t know what ‘Heart & Hustle’ is. I know you’ve got to do whatever you’ve got to do to get a win,” Vaughn added. “It’s a slogan they made up for the team. But I believe you play with heart every single day. Hustle comes whenever you put on your uniform. Hopefully, mentally as a group, we’ll see that we can win.”

Vaughn broke a 5-5 tie after loser Juan Acevedo walked Steve Cox intentionally to get to the Devil Rays’ cleanup hitter.

Ben Grieve drew a bases-loaded walk to drive in another run and Bobby Smith added a two-run double that glanced off pitcher Danny Patterson’s foot and rolled into shallow right field.

Victor Zambrano pitched two-thirds of an inning for the win, and Esteban Yan finished.

“We showed up to play,” Devil Rays manager Hal McRae said. “Players feel we have a chance to win every night. That is the attitude they have. No matter how young they are or regardless of who we are playing.”

Tampa Bay scored on pitcher Jeff Weaver’s throwing error in the third, Brent Abernathy’s RBI double in the fourth and Toby Hall’s run-scoring single in the fifth to build a 3-1 lead against Detroit’s ace.

Cox’s two-run single in the sixth wiped out a 5-3 lead the Tigers took when they scored four times off starter Tanyon Sturtze in the sixth.

Mike Rivera and Jose Macias delivered RBI singles off Sturtze before Bobby Higginson finished the rally with a two-run double off Jesus Colome.

Offseason acquisition Craig Paquette, filling in for injured slugger Dean Palmer, drove in Detroit’s first run with a fourth-inning double.

After becoming the first AL team to lose 100 games since the 1996 Tigers, Tampa Bay begins this season with the youngest (average age 27.51) and least experienced (average big league tenure 2.16 seasons) roster in the majors.

Twelve Devil Rays were on an opening-day roster for the first time and 11 had less than a full season in the majors, including three rookies who had not played above Class A ball.

The youth movement was launched early last summer when the team began trimming the payroll. Tampa Bay finished the season with a scrappy lineup that produced a 27-26 record over the last 47 games.

The key to the stretch was solid pitching, and Sturtze was a big part that in going 8-5 after the All-Star break tying Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens of the Yankees for the most victories in the AL East.

The Devil Rays starter was not at his best against the Tigers, allowing five runs and nine hits in 523 innings.

Athletics 3, Rangers 2

Oakland, Calif. Rookie Carlos Pena homered to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning, lifting Oakland over Texas. Pena sent a 1-1 pitch from Dan Miceli (0-1) over the American flag on the right-center fence at the 388-foot marker. Miceli had pitched a perfect eighth for the Rangers before facing Pena.

Mariners 7, White Sox 4

Seattle Mark McLemore and Mike Cameron drew bases-loaded walks as Seattle rallied for four runs in the seventh inning off Chicago’s bullpen. The comeback allowed the Mariners, winners of a major league record-tying 116 games last season, to avoid opening the 2002 season at 0-2.

Angels 7, Indians 5

Anaheim, Calif. David Eckstein went 3-for-4 and scored three times as Anaheim beat Cleveland. Kevin Appier, acquired from the Mets in a December trade that sent Mo Vaughn to New York, got a no-decision in his Anaheim debut.