From sea to pining sea, members of Red Sox Nation root on a dream

ST. LOUIS -- Clad in a Curt Schilling jersey amid a sea of Cardinals red, Northbridge native Ryan Dill hunkered down at a sports bar Saturday night in the shadow of Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch.

Outnumbered by hundreds, trapped in a pub owned by former Cardinals pitcher Al Hrabosky, the 29-year-old Navy flight instructor expected the worst.

Instead, he got a steady dose of Midwestern hospitality, including a handshake from Hrabosky, who was known as the Mad Hungarian during his playing days because of his long hair, wild beard, and intimidating glare on the mound.

"These guys are good fans," said Dill, who works at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla., but was in St. Louis on a Navy recruiting trip. "I think they just respect me for wearing this shirt."

In far reaches of Red Sox Nation they gathered, downing clam chowder and Sam Adams beer in a suburban Seattle living room, lining up the ketchup bottles in a D.C. bar to ward off The Curse, or watching the game from Murphy's Bleachers in Chicago, steps from storied Wrigley Field. There, long-suffering Cubs fans have been waiting and agonizing -- for 96 years. To show support for their Boston brethren, bartenders rang a large brass bell over the bar every time the Sox scored, something normally reserved for Cubs games.

"Why am I rooting for the Sox? To ease their pain," said Tim McGowan, 41. "If it can't be the Cubs, it's got to be the Red Sox. They've suffered."

As he slathered tomato sauce on a pizza crust in Murphy's kitchen, native Bostonian Jason Robichaud, 28, tried to sneak peeks at the TV. The Cardinals were striking back, tying the score late, but Robichaud dismissed any suggestion there was need to worry. "The history?

Doesn't matter," he said. "The toughest part was beating the Yankees. Everything else, it's easy. It's time."

Not so fast, cautioned former Bostonian Damon Feldman as the overflowing sports-booking area at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas erupted in delighted pandemonium with David Ortiz's first-inning three-run homer. Feldman remained quiet and shook his head.

"Fools," muttered the Sox-cap-clad Feldman, 50, of Santa Fe. "It's the first inning of the first game.

Don't these people know that we'll never win if we get cocky? Amazing."

Denver lawyer Henry Fontana, 42, who grew up in Framingham, had a pair of $250 tickets to see Elton John at Caesars Palace on Saturday night with his wife, but the World Series won out.

"The wife wasn't a happy camper when I told her I wasn't going to see the concert because it would interfere with the game, but that's because she's originally from Des Moines, so she doesn't understand," Fontana said.

At the Rhino Bar and Pumphouse in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., a Red Sox banner was hung outside.

Inside, Amy D'Amore, a 25-year-old Norwood native who works as an analyst for the Defense Department, dismissed talk of The Curse, even as she explained why she will not watch the Patriots until the Red Sox finish playing for the year. "Otherwise, the Red Sox would feel neglected, and that would jinx them," she said.

Sean Fogarty, a Washington lawyer and Boston native, has worn the same gray basketball shirt since the Sox beat the Yankees.

Fogarty, 28, sat at a long table, making sure all the labels on the ketchup and sauce bottles were facing him. They had to, he said, for the Sox to win.

In a cozy suburban living room in West Seattle, about a dozen long-suffering New Englanders, 2,500 miles from their field of dreams in Boston, gathered in front of the television, their hope mixing with dread.

Between innings, Kevin Shurtluff, who grew up in Quincy, acknowledged that the weight of earlier disappointments linger.

"I was pretty bitter last year," he said in reference to the heartbreaking loss to the Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series. A photograph of Babe Ruth hangs upside down at the Connecticut Yankee, bar in San Francisco that, despite its name, has become the Bay Area's home base for Sox fans.

"No disrespect intended," Fritz Frisbie, the bar's owner and a native of Portsmouth, N.H., said of the inverted picture.

"But we had to think of something to reverse The Curse."

On opening night of the series, about 150 Sox faithful crowded into the bar, erupting into cheers that could be heard blocks away.

In St. Louis, Sox fans who waded into enemy territory noted a decidedly civil rivalry, compared with the histrionics of the Yankees-Sox rivalry. "No one gave me a hard time," said Kim Stevens, an foster care consultant in East Bridgewater who was in town for a board meeting. "It's the Midwest. Everybody's nice."

For Bill Appleton, a transplanted Bostonian who moved to St. Louis two years ago, there are pitfalls. His 7-year- daughter, Isabelle, came home from school distraught last week when told by teachers to wear red clothing in honor the hometown Cards.

They reached a compromise. Isabelle would wear red socks. "As a Boston Red Sox fan, you always have to be subtly subversive," Appleton said.

Globe correspondents Sandeep Kaushik, Gary Gately, Steve Friess, Bobby Caina Calvan, and Eric Ferkenhoff contributed to this report.