CURSING THE BAMBINO ONCE AGAIN - So the Cubs-Red Sox World Series we thought might happen turns out to be another pipe dream. The Yankees roll to the World Series.

No Home Run For Advertisers With World Series. No matter what happens in the seventh game of the American League Championship series tonight, a media buying firm predicts that it will at best be a standup triple for advertisers.

ATTACK OF THE TV MOVIES -- You'd think that a benefit of the saturation cable news coverage of big stories would be a decline in the number of "fact-based" TV movies that shamelessly try to dramatize them. It would have been comforting to know that 9/11 was so terrible and traumatic, so lodged in the nation's memory, that there wouldn't be any TV movies about it.

THE RIFF LIVES FOR THIS - Major League Baseball's advertising campaign within the championship and World Series shows superstar ballplayers discussing why they love the game, adding, "I live for this." Something tells the Riff we're not going to see a spot from Pedro Martinez, Don Zimmer, Karim Garcia or Manny Ramirez.

CURSE OF THE ONION -- You've heard of the Sports Illustrated curse, which as several MediaPost staffers have pointed out, is alive as ever. But here's another for your consideration: The curse of The Onion.

TUNE IN TWO WEEKS LATER? - Riff is sympathetic to Fox's problem every fall, getting its primetime schedule launched amid baseball. While it's a great platform to promote the new programs, it might be a little too much to ask viewers to remember that a new show will start Oct.

THE COURTS GIVETH AND TAKETH AWAY. Two court rulings are having profoundly different effects on investor confidence of two major media companies.

NOW PITCHING, MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL - One of the biggest advertisers during baseball's division championships this past week was Major League Baseball itself. Spots on Fox and ESPN featured players like Derek Jeter and Torii Hunter, with the Minnesota Twins centerfielder exclaiming that he'd rather steal a home run than hit a home run.

BLOWING WIND OVER WINDY CITY. Is New York in danger of losing its status as the "First City?" Possibly, at least in terms of major league baseball media supremacy goes.

HOW DOES BRENNAN & CO. SOUND? The ouster of Bob Brennan from president of Leo Burnett Worldwide initially comes as bad news for agency media operations, but could be a blessing in disguise of, as the Riff suspects, Brennan returns from the dark side of the business to helm a media department, or, for that matter, start one of his own.