Global attraction

LONDON -- All over the world, legions of otherwise productive and healthy people found themselves unable to sleep for almost two weeks.

Some have been staying up in loud bars until the wee hours of the morning; parents are waking up children before dawn to engage in strange, nocturnal rituals that involve howling and dancing in the living room. Neighbors can't explain what has happened; colleagues and teachers are concerned.

They are Red Sox Nation living abroad -- waiting, hoping, and yearning in distant lands, foreign capitals, and even in war zones for The Moment.

But to see it they've had to struggle in time zones where the ninth inning rolls around just before it's time to put on the coffee or to get the kids ready for school. They have bags under their eyes, they're exhausted, and they've never been so happy in their lives about the hometown team, which finished a sweep of St. Louis last night for the franchise's first World Series title since 1918.

"I can't believe it! This is really happening isn't it? I've been through 1975 and 1986 and everything in between. And now the Red Sox are going to win a World Series in my lifetime!" said Rui Tereso, 38, a real estate investment manager from Newton, Mass., shouting over the noise and excitement at the Sports Cafe in London.

"It's surreal. We aren't supposed to expect good things. Of course, we expect them to lose. That's what being a Red Sox fan is, right?" Tereso asked at the bar that has become ground zero for Red Sox Nation in London.

In Johannesburg, six hours ahead of Boston, Matt Tardif, 33, a native of Laconia, N.H., has watched every game of the Red Sox playoffs and World Series. It means he has stayed up all night for 14 nights in the past month.

Tardif, a fifth-grade teacher at the American International School in Johannesburg, said his co-workers don't all understand, but are sympathetic.

"They say to me that I must be wiped. But I'm energized. I'm too pumped to notice," he said, adding that the hard part is being away from friends back home.

But he has found other ways to keep up his spirit. For one thing, he picked up an "I Do Believe" bumper sticker at Fenway Park this summer. And he's created new rituals. Every night before the games, which start at 2 a.m. or 2:30 a.m. local time, he eats a homemade concoction he calls Papi's Stew.

His wife, Lindi, a South African who has become a Red Sox fan, won't eat it. But she does eat a hot dog as the games start "just to get that Fenway feeling."

For most fans in the Red Sox diaspora, the hard part is accepting that fate has condemned them to be so far away from the hardball holy land -- Fenway Park -- at the hour of what seemed to be the imminent release from the Curse of the Bambino. Brian McNulty, 21, of Webster, Mass., is a Northeastern University student in London on a junior year abroad, sporting a Red Sox hat and T-shirt. "I want to be there, but I couldn't afford the flights. They were like $900.

"But, hey, Red Sox Nation is everywhere in the world. I'll take a World Series victory any time, any place I can get it."

For thousands of Sox fans in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, the call to duty has kept them away.

In Baghdad, First Sergeant Steve Valley, 39, a reservist from Brockton, was holed up last night inside the fortified Green Zone, watching Game 4, which was scheduled to start at 3:30 a.m. Baghdad time. He's added to his uniform a camouflage Red Sox cap -- one of 20 that the Sox organization sent to his unit after finding out that the Yankees were sending caps to soldiers from New York. The sleeplessness is made easier by the fact that he lives in a trailer with a Yankee fan who has been silenced.

He had always told his wife in Florida that if his beloved Sox ever won the World Series she would have to be prepared for him to fly up there to celebrate. "Wouldn't you know, the year that it's going to happen, I'm in Baghdad."

As a Red Sox fan, he says, it is part of the existential condition to wait for "something bad to happen." But, he added, "We all believe. This is the year."

It has certainly gotten a lot easier in recent years for Sox fans abroad to follow the games, with satellite television and even broadband Internet connections. Gone are the days when a wayward member of the Nation had to rely on shortwave radio.

For the Nation in Europe, games are beamed live by the North American Sports Network. A local cable channel in Britain secured the license for the World Series. But NASN is well known among Red Sox fans in Europe for carrying the games all year, including the Yankees series, and it rebroadcasts the games the following day for those who can manage to wait that long.

Amory Schwartz, 42, chief executive of Dublin-based NASN, describes himself as from the "fringes of the Red Sox Nation" since he went to school in New Hampshire and summered on Martha's Vineyard.

"The Nation reaches all over the world, and they are by far the most fully invested fans in American sports," Schwartz said.

In the Dominican Republic, the tiny island-nation of 8 million that produces 25 percent of all major league ballplayers, Sox superstars Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Pedro Martinez are beloved dignitaries.

Edgar Cuevas, 28, an engineering student who was watching a small, old television outside the Dogout, a popular hotdog stand, said, "Eighty percent of people here are fanatics for Boston.

"Sure there are other Dominicans in the major leagues, but the people feel closest to Pedro, David, and Manny," he insisted. Staff writers Anne Barnard in Baghdad, John Donnelly in Johannesburg, and Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, contributed to this report. Correspondent Sarah Liebowitz in London also contributed.