St. Louis ? Derek Lowe came through where Dave Ferriss failed. And Jim Lonborg. And Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst, too.

With the Red Sox one precious win from that elusive World Series title, 27 huge outs from the moment much of New England has prayed for, Lowe came through with the game of a lifetime, a moment that will be replayed over and over as long as baseball is played in Boston.

Lowe ended 85 years of lowlights, helped the Red Sox get over the top. He shut out the St. Louis Cardinals on three hits in seven innings and completed an amazing World Series sweep — the first for the Red Sox — with a 3-0 victory Wednesday night that made him the first pitcher to win three postseason clinchers in one year.

“Unbelievable,” Lowe said. “No more going to Yankee Stadium and having to listen to ‘1918!'”

Ferriss left in the fifth inning of Game 7 in the 1946 Series with St. Louis ahead 3-1, and Lonborg lasted six innings in the seventh game in 1967, piling up a 7-1 deficit.

Clemens turned a 3-2 lead over to his bullpen in the sixth game in 1986, but it wasn’t enough. And two nights later — exactly 18 years to the day earlier — Hurst blew a 3-0 sixth-inning lead in Game 7 and left with the score tied.

Lowe, the first pitcher to win a World Series clincher for Boston since Carl Mays in 1918, put up zeros on the scoreboard as Johnny Damon’s leadoff homer in the first and Trot Nixon’s two-run double in the third provided the offense that sent Boston on to its eighth straight postseason win.

Boston pitcher Derek Lowe reacts to an inning-ending out. Lowe pitched seven scoreless innings, and the Red Sox defeated the Cardinals, 3-0, Wednesday night in St. Louis.

Before the game, he was in Boston’s dugout on the third-base side of Busch Stadium singing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

The 31-year-old right-hander, born in Dearborn, Mich., and a resident of Boston’s spring-training town of Fort Myers, Fla., has been with the Red Sox since 1997. He was their closer in 2000 and much of 2001 before 10 losses in relief caused Boston to bounce him back to the rotation.