BELFAST – Rick Jenness vividly remembers the last time the Red Sox were in the World Series and how his dreams for a championship trickled away on a ground ball through the legs of Bill Buckner.

Jenness didn’t smash the furniture in his Belfast home as some people from around the region did that Saturday night 18 years ago, but he made sure that one piece was banished forever.

“I was sitting on a hassock about two feet away from the TV,” Jenness recalled Saturday, just hours before the 2004 World Series between the Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals was to begin. “I was excited, I thought for sure this would be it. When that ball went through Buckner’s legs I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t sleep at all that night, I was tossing and turning. That hassock? It’s somewhere in the attic, and it’s not coming back.”

The Red Sox lost that World Series to the New York Mets in seven games.

The World Series is 100 years old this weekend and, as every fan knows, the Red Sox last won a World Championship in 1918. In the four World Series they’ve played since then, they lost each one in seven games.

Two of those four World Series match-ups were against this year’s opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals. The first was in 1946, the second in 1967. The Sox returned to the series in 1975, only to lose a thrilling seven-game set to the Big Red Machine from Cincinnati. And then there was the 1986 heartbreaker against the Mets.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Jenness said of the loss to the Mets. “For two or three days, that’s all we talked about at work. We just couldn’t believe the collapse, the Red Sox were so much better than the Mets. At that time I thought they’d be back in the series the next year. I really thought they would do it, but karma will tell you they weren’t that fortunate.”

The 1946 World Series will be remembered for the hitting slump endured by the great Ted Williams. Williams was among the American League leaders in every batting category that year but was held to six singles during the seven-game set. He had been hit by a pitch during a pre-series warm-up game, and the injury affected his batting stroke.

The ’46 series also was noted for the final play in game seven when Cardinal Enos “Country” Slaughter scored the winning run from first base on a double to center field by Harry “The Hat” Walker. Outfielder Leon Culberson retrieved the hit and weakly threw to shortstop Johnny Pesky. Pesky’s relay to the plate was too late to catch the streaking Slaughter.

Although forever known as the game where “Pesky held the ball,” Pesky’s teammates always claimed that Slaughter had the throw clearly beaten. Things might have been different if rifle-armed center fielder Dom DiMaggio had been in the game, but he was on the bench with an injury and Culberson was a less than adequate replacement.

Pesky, now 85, was in uniform Saturday night and received a rousing ovation from the Fenway Park fans when he was introduced before Game 1 of the 2004 World Series.

Retired newsman Ted Sylvester recalled listening to the 1946 World Series on the radio as a schoolboy. All of the games were played during the daytime, and it was common for teachers to allow their students to listen to the games.

“I remember Enos Slaughter running home with the winning run and it was devastating,” Sylvester said Sunday. “Every year I always thought they’d come back and win it, but it just never happened. I really think this is the year.”

Rockland lawyer James Brannan was in junior high school when the Red Sox squared off against the Cardinals at the culmination of their 1967 Impossible Dream season.

Brannan remembers the great Carl Yastrzemski carrying the Sox to the pennant during that wild summer and still can hear the radio voices of broadcasters Ken Coleman and Ned Martin bouncing off his pillow during those September nights when the Sox fought for first place. That was the era before wild cards and divisions, and the Boston club was locked in a four-way race for the division until the last out of the season.

“I had a little transistor radio and I’d put it on my pillow and listen to those games while my mother thought I was doing my homework,” Brannan said Saturday.

He also remembered how the pitching of Cardinal Bob Gibson and the batting of Lou Brock carried the Cardinals to the championship.

“I remember when the World Series was over and everybody was just so thrilled to have been in the World Series after 20 years of losing,” said Brannan. “There was no talk of any curse. Nobody at Rockland High School or around the city seemed to be upset that they lost. It was the Impossible Dream, they had made it to the World Series.”

Eight years later, Brannan was preparing to take his law school boards at Bowdoin College when another World Series intervened.

“I remember the first game, Luis Tiant pitched a 6-0 shutout against the Reds. Needless to say I had to take the exams a second time. My mind was not on the LSATs with the Red Sox in the series,” he said.

Ah yes, 1975. Butch Richards of Belfast was a senior at the University of Maine when the Sox and Reds engaged in that epic struggle. Though the Sox lost in seven games, it was the 12th inning, walk-off home run by Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk in Game 6 that entranced New England and enthralled baseball fans everywhere except Cincinnati.

“I remember there was about six of us in our apartment living room,” said Richards. “We had a little black-and-white TV with rabbit ears on it and kept trying to keep the game tuned in. When Fisk hit that home run, the whole room went absolutely nuts.”

Like Brannan, Richards has no recollection of anyone talking about any curse after the Sox fell to the Reds. He and his friends were kids just a few years earlier when the 1967 team went to the series, and they all expected that pennants would come every few years.

If there was anything about the earlier years that Richards laments, it is that all of the World Series games are played at night. When he was growing up, Richards said, the world was a less hectic place and the World Series was played at a less hectic pace.

“As kids we had grown up with the World Series no matter who was playing. They were all day games, so you followed the games at school and on the weekend,” Richards said Sunday. “It’s too bad that the games are all at night now. The kids don’t get to see the series like we did, and that’s a shame.”

Despite the heartbreaking seven-game World Series losses that have been shared by generations, Sox fans remain convinced that this is the year the Red Sox will wave the championship banner over Fenway Park. As Brannan observed, it’s only a matter of faith.

“I’m convinced that all the people who were Red Sox fans who have died and gone to heaven over all those losing seasons have finally convinced God that this is truly our year,” he said.

Perhaps he’s right and this really is the Red Sox year. But you won’t get Bangor resident Mary Mossman to predict victory. One has to wonder, though, considering what occurred at the Mossman house as the Sox and Cards were getting ready to play Saturday night’s Game 1.

As Mossman was going through some old papers left by her late father, Felix Ranlett, the former Bangor Library librarian, she came across letters written by Ranlett’s father, Frederick Jordan Ranlett, to his son who was serving in France during World War I.

In one letter, the elder Ranlett informed his son that the Red Sox had won the pennant. In another written 10 days later, he recounted the last day of Red Sox glory when the legendary Babe Ruth led the team over the Chicago Cubs four games to two to win the 1918 World Series.

“They just popped out at me,” Mossman said Sunday of the letters. “I thought it was pretty amazing that I just happened to put my hands on those letters on the day of the game.”

Mossman, who grew up in a household where her older brothers constantly quizzed her on baseball statistics, said that when she told her son Christopher, who lives in Florida, of her find, he suggested it could be an “omen” of good things to come.

When asked if she truly believed the Red Sox were on the cusp of victory, Mossman demurred. Like a true die-hard fan, she replied instead, “I wouldn’t dare say. I don’t want to jinx them.”