On the field, Thursday night’s game between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays was a battle for the American League Championship.

But in Maine homes, offices, and lunch spots on Friday, it turned into the battle of the bedtimes.

Many fans had to grudgingly admit that they hit the sack around the seventh inning, when the Sox were trailing by seven runs with seven outs to go. With the Sox on the brink of elimination you could almost feel the breeze from millions of bedspreads across New England being turned down at the same time.

Others beamed with pride as they told of how they stayed wide-eyed for the whole game, never lost the faith, and witnessed history: the biggest comeback in a post-season baseball game since 1929. The Sox won, 8 to 7.

You can bet you won’t feel any sort of bedspread breeze tonight, when the Sox and Rays play again, with the Rays leading the championship series three games to two.

Legions of fans learned Thursday, the hard way, that you should never give up on these Sox.

“We found out they won when we were watching the weather – we didn’t even watch the sports because we were so sure they lost,” said Amanda Callahan, 35, during lunch Friday at Rivalries, a sports bar on Cotton Street.

Callahan said she and her boyfriend both went to sleep before the comeback. “We were so disappointed,” she said. “We said to each other we will never, ever, turn off the game early again.”

Even if the Sox win tonight, they would still have to win game 7 of the best-of-seven series on Sunday for a trip to the World Series. But as a fan, you can’t get too caught up in the numbers. That’s another lesson of Thursday’s game, one that Ray Cloutier of Windham says he’s learned.

“I went to bed around the sixth inning, when they said (on TV) that it was going to be the first time the Sox had lost three in a row at home in the post season,” said Cloutier, 38. “When I saw on TV in the morning they won, I couldn’t believe it. I had to switch channels to make sure. (Tonight) I’ll be watching the whole time.”

A few tables away at Rivalries, John Coleman of Yarmouth was happy to say he did stay up until the end and watched the glorious 8-7 win with his wife.

But it was sort of by accident.

“When it was 7-0, we started flipping channels, going to CNN to watch political stuff,” said Coleman, 45. “Then we saw somebody on a newscast talking like the Sox had won. So we turned back and got to see the end. I think we missed about an inning.”

Coleman’s lunch mate, Greg Smith of Freeport, was positive that the Sox would lose when he turned off the game around the seventh inning. So positive was he that he reported the loss confidently Friday morning when one of his sons asked him about the game.

“Then my youngest son turned on the TV and said, ‘That was so mean of you, they won,'” said Smith, 41.

Instead of beating himself up for missing the drama, Smith became philosophical, which of course is a defense mechanism many Sox fans adopted during 86 years of ultra-dramatic losing.

“It bums me out that I didn’t get to see it, but I believe in Sox karma,” he said. “It was my fate to not witness that. I put it in God’s or whoever’s hands. A win’s a win.”

Whether you sleep through it or not.