LEWISTON – John Richards of Auburn is 55 and has cancer.

Travis Stearns of South Paris is 20 and has been fighting off infections in a fractured leg for the past 14 months.

Cynthia Henson of Mechanic Falls is 46 and suffering from spinal fractures resulting from osteoporosis.

On Sunday night, though, each was wearing a big smile. Their pains were on pause. They were making a visual visit to Fenway Park via the televisions in their hospital rooms.

And their team, the Boston Red Sox, was ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals in the early innings of Game 2 of the World Series.

“All right!” voiced Richards as Jason Varitek sent Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz home with a long triple in the bottom of the first. “What an inning, what a good inning!”

“What’s the score?” asked a nurse as she poked her head into Richards’ room. “That’s great,” she added when she heard his answer.

Estella Gibbs, the Sunday night nursing supervisor at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, said she would be visiting Richards as the evening wore on – not only to check on his condition, but also the score.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “They’ll stop by quite often to catch up on the score,” he said of the nursing staff.

He stayed up into the wee hours Sunday morning to take in the conclusion of the World Series opener. He was planning on doing the same for Sunday’s Game 2.

Ditto for Stearns.

He was watching each play like a hawk at his Central Maine Medical Center room, a tiny TV swung around just so to provide him with the best view.

The last time the Red Sox made it to a World Series, Stearns was 2 years old. He’s looking forward, he said, to finally seeing this year’s “Idiots” do what a Beantown team hasn’t done since 1918.

“They’ll take it in six,” Stearns predicted.

Richards agreed.

“They’ll go six games – at the most,” he said. “I hope it goes four of five,” he added.

Forget that, says Henson.

“Four games straight,” she said from a room two or three doors down from Stearns’.

Henson is probably the newest fan to the Sox fold among the three. She began following the team’s ups and downs three or four years ago, she said, after learning from her husband about some of the game’s intricacies.

“He used to watch it, and I’d be so bored I’d fall asleep,” she said. “Now, I’m the one who stays up.”

And she was prepared to stay up late Sunday.

A 2004 Red Sox yearbook rested on her lap as she reclined on the hospital bed. Her nightgown consisted of Red Sox logo after logo. A nursing aide at the hospital had it made for her, and never mind that it meant someone had to drive to Augusta to find the right material.

“They’re wonderful here,” she said of the nurses and others on the medical staff. “They’re family, my second family.”

About then nurse Jackie Rideout came calling. She puttered about for a few minutes, checking on Henson’s needs, then stayed to visit and watch some of the game.

Like the others, Rideout is a Red Sox fan.

Her job, she notes, includes checking in regularly on patients, but during the Series, she admits she might be staying a tad longer.

Beating the Yankees – in Yankee Stadium no less – to claim the American League championship was like seeing a dream come true, said Rideout. Seeing the Red Sox win a World Series, well, there might not be words enough to describe it.

Richards might try, though.

“Here we go,” he said as another Sox batter moved into the box. “Geez, that’s wonderful!”