Fans in St. Louis Warily Root for Rams : Football: After losing out in the last NFL expansion and being jilted by Patriots, the city’s faithful sets sights on Anaheim’s team.

While more animated members of the St. Louis Rams Fan Club spent Sunday afternoon bouncing off their bar stools and screaming at the big-screen television, Bryan Herrick absorbed the wild twists and turns of the Rams-New Orleans Saints game with stoicism.

“I’m kind of confused,” said Herrick, 31, wearing a Rams’ jersey and using a Rams’ helmet for a table centerpiece. “Do I root for the Rams with all my heart and hope they win because they might move here? Or do I root against them, because if they win and go to the playoffs, there’s no way they’ll leave Anaheim?”

Such mixed emotions seem to be afflicting many St. Louis football fans, who are feeling a bit shellshocked these days.

They thought their city was a lock for an NFL expansion team last year before Charlotte and Jacksonville were awarded franchises.

They thought New England Patriots owner James Orthwein, a St. Louis native, would move his team here last January, but New England businessman Robert Kraft purchased the team at the last minute and kept it in the Boston area.

Now St. Louis is a strong candidate to lure the Rams from Orange County, but like the curious kid who puts his finger on a hot stove-- twice --fans here are a little hesitant.

“There’s a lot of ‘closet’ fans and it’s going to take a while to get them out, but they’re out there,” said Joe Moreno, 28, a medical company employee from Edwardsville, Ill. “They’re hiding. They’re scared. I think everyone’s hyped up, but after what happened this past year, they don’t want to get their hopes up too high.”

But they have to do something to show their loyalty to Ram President John Shaw, who has questioned whether St. Louis is as good a football town as Baltimore, the other city pursuing the Rams.

So they started their own Rams fan club. The group, which has grown to about 50 or 60 members since bartender Joe DeLurgio started the club, met for the fourth consecutive weekend Sunday in Walter Payton’s Americas Bar at Union Station, which is marketing itself as the official St. Louis Rams headquarters.

Walking in, one could easily have mistaken the place for The Catch Restaurant across the street from Anaheim Stadium. Rams schedules and bumper stickers were posted around the room, and blue and gold balloons were tied up around the bar.

Fans wore St. Louis Rams Fan Club T-shirts, Ram hats, and one woman came with a Ram goody bag that was stuffed with Rammy Whammy handkerchiefs, blue and gold pompons, a Ram calendar and St. Louis Rams pins.

“I have so much Ram paraphernalia it’s disgusting,” said Suzanne Shrader, 27, who grew up in Newport Beach but moved to Chesterfield, Mo., last year. “I’ve been a Rams fan since I was 5 and had season tickets my whole life. I think I’d die if they didn’t come here. I’d cry, and I’d be really depressed.”

Shrader wasn’t the only Southern California native in the house. Rob Ackles, 29, who moved from Anaheim to St. Louis three years ago, and Larry Glascott, 31, who moved from La Crescenta to St. Louis in July, were among the crowd who watched the Saints beat the Rams, 37-34.

The rest of the club seemed to consist of former St. Louis Cardinal football fans, who endured three years of threats and rumors before team owner Bill Bidwill finally made it official and moved the Cardinals to Phoenix after the 1987 season.

“St. Louis getting the Rams would be like the world finding a cure for AIDS,” said 30-year-old St. Louis resident Thurman Vaught, who works for a courier business. “I grew up with the Cardinals and was in tears when they left. They took more than a team away. They took my memories away.”

In their wake, the Cardinals left a trail of losing seasons and poor attendance records--at least for their final six seasons in St. Louis--and the city has been trying to fight that image since.

A great baseball town, St. Louis is. A great hockey town too. But football? Forget it, many say.

But Chad Everett, a 32-year-old from Chesterfield and a longtime Cardinal football fan, is convinced St. Louis will support another NFL team.

“We set attendance records at the Sports Festival last summer, but are you going to tell me this is a great gymnastics town?” Everett said. “No. We set attendance records at an LPGA event here last month. Are we a golf town now?

“This is a good sports town. If a football team does the right things and is committed to the fans, we’re going to be loyal to it.”

Payton, the former Chicago Bear running back who was involved in St. Louis’ expansion effort, agreed.

“It’s not always how things are but how they’re perceived,” said Payton, who stopped by his bar Sunday. “People here want to be identified with the NFL.”

At any price, apparently. A few weeks ago, two St. Louis radio disc jockeys were arrested for their role in a street sign caper after sending two interns to steal a “Shaw Avenue” sign to send to the Ram president. The interns got caught.

The jocks, from station Q-104, were charged with stealing merchandise valued at under $150 and released, and they have a court date of Nov. 18.

“I think we’re going to plead Rams insanity,” said Isaiah Wilhelm, one of the two who were arrested. “We thought we’d send it to Shaw with a note saying, ‘We like you so much we’ve already named a street after you.’ The St. Louis Street Dept. found out, and they made us a new sign that we sent to Shaw last week.

“Heck, we broke the law for John Shaw. We got arrested for the Rams. What else can we do?”

But are fans willing to put their money where their mouths are? Part of the city’s proposal to the Rams is to raise $60 million to $90 million through a seat-licensing plan, in which fans pay a one-time fee for the right to purchase season tickets in the new domed stadium, which is under construction downtown. A similar program in Charlotte charged fans $500-$5,400 per seat.

“It would take a big chunk out of my paycheck and I don’t like having to do that, but if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it,” Ackles said. “I know the Rams would get better support here than they get in Anaheim.”

And, perhaps, Baltimore, Glascott said. The Cardinals had only 10 winning seasons in 28 years in St. Louis and made the playoffs only twice. The Colts, on the other hand, had a long and storied tradition in Baltimore, where they won two NFL championships and one Super Bowl and developed a cult following before moving to Indianapolis in 1984.

“With such a storied history of the Colts, who knows if people there would accept the Rams?” Glascott said. “The Cardinals haven’t won a championship since 1948, and that’s when they played in Chicago. There’s not a lot of football history here, so our approach to the Rams would almost be like having an expansion team, starting over.”

Ram fever is building in St. Louis. The fan club has grown each week, and DeLurgio said 10 or so fans are tentatively planning to travel to Anaheim--with a St. Louis Rams Fan Club banner--for the Rams’ Nov. 13 game against the Raiders.

People here want to reach out to the Rams, tell them how much they’re wanted . . . but they don’t want to get burned again.

“For three years (1985-87) we didn’t know whether the Cardinals were staying or going, and our hearts were on a string,” Everett said. “Then there was three years of silence. Then there was the expansion debacle, and then the glimmer of hope that the Patriots would move here.

“We’re on a carousel of hope, but we’ve got to be very cautious.”