Home Run Derby

So I went to the store the other day to replenish my weekly box of Wheaties (I eat ‘em with dried cranberries) and – to my disappointment – found the box to be once again graced by Bryan Clay.

Who’s that, you ask?  Well I guess he’s some US decathlete who won a Gold Medal in the 2008 Olympics back in August.  Incidentally, 99.8% of America hasn’t cared about that since, ohhh … three days back in August.

And I was wondering … why hasn’t this guy been knocked off the box by the 2008 World Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies?

Seriously.  From 2004 through 2007, the World Series Champion was immortalized on the Wheaties box.  Take a gander …

That’s David Ortiz, Mark Buehrle, Chris Carpenter, and Josh Beckett representing the last four World Series Champions.

But the Phillies have apparently received the shaft from Wheaties.  Is the economics of whole-wheat cereal so bad that General Mills can’t afford to put even a single Phillie on the box?  Did they blow their 2008 endorsement budget on the Celtics’ Kevin Garnett, triathlete Jarrod Shoemaker, gymnast Nastia Liukin, and decathlete Bryan Clay? 

Either way, I think that’s wrong.  If you win a World Series – at least one of your players should get on the Wheaties Box.  Even if it’s just a limited edition in that town.

So here’s a few Wheaties boxes I put together for the World Series Champion Phillies …

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Josh Beckett is the latest face of a World Series Champion to grace the bright orange box that supplies my breakfast almost every morning.  Which means that they actually put a World Series MVP on the cover of a Wheaties Box.

Too bad it’s about four years late.

You see, Josh Beckett isn’t the World Series MVP for the 2007 Champion Boston Red Sox.

He was the World Series MVP for the 2003 Champion Florida Marlins.

The past four seasons (2004-2007), General Mills has put a member of the World Series Champion on the cover of the Wheaties box.

And the past four seasons, it hasn’t been the World Series MVP.

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