WHEN BOSTON WON THE WORLD SERIES, by Bob Ryan, Running Press, Philadelphia, 2003, 192 pages, $18.95.

Many New Englanders will find it hard to believe, but there was a time when Boston dominated the baseball world. The team, in fact, won the very first World Series at Huntington Street Grounds a century ago on Oct. 13, 1903, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates five games to four in the nine-game series.

Not only that, but they dominated baseball from 1912 to 1918, when they won four pennants and four more World Series championships. Then, as your father and grandfather have told you, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold star left-hander George Herman (Babe) Ruth to the weakling New York Yankees on a day that lives in infamy, Jan 5, 1920.

Since that date, history will show that the hated Yankees have won 26 World Series championships and the Boston Red Sox exactly zero. As of this date, the Yankees are tearing up the American League, even with superstar shortstop Derek Jeter injured and multimillionaire pitcher Jose Contreras banished to the minor leagues. Imagine what will happen when these two get back.

If you are over the age of 21, the Red Sox will not win another championship in your lifetime. You might as well buy the book “When Boston Won the World Series,” by Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan. Ryan, praised as the “quintessential American sportswriter” by ESPN sports guru Tony Kornheiser, does not exactly knock himself out in this small book, leaving the century-old facts, figures and Globe accounts of the games to tell the story.

But it will become an essential addition to any Sox fan’s library. When “the committee” of relief pitchers loses another game for Pedro Martinez or Derek Lowe in the ninth inning, just take this volume down and read any page. The Sox have been lovable losers for so long that it does the baseball heart good to look back on the glory days.

At the turn of the century, the National League was the power and the American League just emerging upstarts. When the Boston Americans (not the Red Sox until 1907) roared through their schedule, winning 91 games while losing only 47, the call went up for a series with the powerhouse Pirates, who won the league in 1902 by a whooping 271/2 games.

The Boston team had legendary Cy Young on the mound, aided by “Big Bill” Dineen. The classy infield had Jimmy Collins, Hobe Ferris, Harry Gleason, “Candy” LaChance and shortstop Freddie Parent from Sanford, Maine. The outfielders were Patsy Dougherty, “Buck” Freeman, Jack O’Brien and Chick Stahl.

The Pittsburgh team was led by Hall of Famer Honus Wagner but had a suspect pitching staff led by Charles “Deacon” Phillippe, “Brickyard” Kennedy and Sam Leever, with infielders Kitty Bransfield, Otto Krueger, Tommy Leach, Hans Lobert, Joe Marshall and outfielders “Ginger” Beaumont, Fred Clarke, Gene Curtis, Ernie Diehl and Reddy Gray.

On Oct. 1, 1903, on the current Huntington Avenue site of Northeastern University, the teams opened the first World Series (admission 25 cents) with the visitors getting four runs off Cy Young in the first inning and winning 7-3, lending credence to the prevailing theory that Boston was hopelessly overmatched. But Dineen took the mound for the second game and pitched a three-hitter aided by Patsy Dougherty’s two home runs for a 3-0 Boston win. But Pittsburgh ruined the day for 30,000 Boston fans when they took the third game 4-2, for a series lead of two games to one.

The teams took the train to “Smoky City” for the next four games. Pittsburgh reacted to home cooking by taking another game, 5-4, for a series lead of three games to one. But in the next game, a bit of Boston magic happened.

The 200 “Royal Rooters” from Boston, led by tavern owner Mike “Nuf Ced” McGreevey, started singing “Tessie,” a popular show tune from the show “Silver Slipper.” The more they sang, the better their team played. “Tessie” was the real star of the series. Pirate Tommy Leach said later in “The Glory of Their Times,” by Lawrence Ritter, that “We beat them three out of the first four games and then they started singing that damn ‘Tessie’ song. In the fifth game, they started singing ‘Tessie’ for no reason at all and the Boston team won. They must have figured it was a good luck charm because from then on, you could hardly play ball because they were singing ‘Tessie’ so loud. ”

In game five, Cy Young bested a tiring “Brickyard” Kennedy, 11-2. Serenaded by the Boston fans, Dineen took the mound for game six and easily beat sore-armed Sam Leever, in a game when sure-handed Wagner made an error. Young was back on the mound for Game 7. He gave up 10 hits, but bested “Deacon” Phillippe, who was making his fourth start in 10 days, by 7-3.

Boston now took the train home with a 4-3 series lead. They needed only one more win for the championship. They got in on Oct. 13, a century ago, as 30,000 Boston fans joined the Royal Rooters in singing the new theme song. Dineen was back on the mound for Boston against Leever, who, it was said, could no longer lift his arm over his shoulder. Ferris hit a crucial two-run single and the Boston team had the first World Series, by a score of 3-0.

Wagner, who went a woeful 6 for 26 and made several errors, struck out to end the game.

Boston Globe scribe Tim Murnane gave credit where it was due. “‘Tessie,’ an obscure maiden whom someone named in a ragtime melody, wasn’t much in the place the librettist and composer built for her. But she has a place in history. She will go tunefully tripping down the ages as the famous mascot who helped the Boston Americans win three out of four in Pittsburgh, capturing the final game in Boston and with it the title ‘champions of the world.'”

Maybe Sox fans should get a copy of “Tessie” and start singing it at Fenway Park.