As Spring Training opens for the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies, I was looking for a topic to start off the season, but I didn’t feel like devoting an entire column to steroids or the useless multi-year signings of Cole Hamels and Ryan Howard.

But I’m still going to address both topics in my typical angry manner.

Seriously, we didn’t gain anything but happy thoughts and goodwill from those signings because the contracts didn’t lock up either player for anything more than their arbitration years. Hamels and Howard are guaranteed to be here no longer than they were guaranteed to be here at the start of last season.

I could have written a few full columns about Alex Rodriguez and steroids but every one of them would have ended with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig saying that the league is really trying to clean up the sport. The problem is that he is lying. He is a big fat liar!

In reality, Selig, who made more than $18 million in 2008, looked the other way when steroid talk really picked up in the 1990s because the bulked up, homer-happy league was finally reuniting with the fans it lost due to the 1994 strike. Selig should just quit and let someone competent run the league and enact a meaningful steroid policy. It should probably be someone who can read a weather forecast during the World Series or someone who asks questions when he sees used needles in clubhouse trash cans.

And by the way, how come J.C. Romero gets suspended for 50 games for following his union’s instructions and buying over-the-counter supplements in the mall, but A-Roid gets a sad face from Selig as his punishment when he deliberately took steroids to boost his performance? Where’s the justice in that?

So while avoiding writing about those two topics, my friend, who was surfing the Internet instead of working, sent me a link to http://www.HomerDerby.com, which posed the question, “Why aren’t the 2008 Phillies on a Wheaties Box?”

Honestly, I was so excited from seeing the first championship of my lifetime that I didn’t even realize General Mills snubbed the Phillies and us fans. Maybe I didn’t notice because the only cereals I eat are Fruit Loops or anything with marshmallows, but nonetheless, I immediately became enraged when I saw this!

Now, we have all seen Wheaties boxes with athletes on them, including champions of all sports and random Olympic heroes, but where are our 2008 Phillies? The advertisement on every box of Wheaties says “The Breakfast of Champions,” but apparently not all champions, because our Phillies are nowhere to be found.

I understand that not every sports team gets a Wheaties box when they win it all, but this was the first championship for Philadelphia in 25 years! Our 25-year drought was the longest for any city with teams in all four major professional sports. How could that not be worthy of a box of Wheaties?

The last four World Series champions have been on the cover of Wheaties boxes, and I even have a box of Maple Frosted Wheaties with my boyhood idol, Roger Clemens, on the box in a Toronto Blue Jays uniform. (Yes, I do believe he used steroids, but they didn’t make him better, they only kept him healthy longer. His fastball lost 7 mph, but he learned a curveball and a splitter to compensate for it.)

Clemens got on the box just for playing in Canada! Apparently Canada became so completely devoid of sporting champions once Wayne Gretzky became irrelevant, that Wheaties just started honoring people for choosing to play in the Great White North.

So instead of just complaining about General Mills slighting an entire championship-starved city, I decided to find out why. I contacted the General Mills Media Line, and here is the e-mail response I received from Shelly Dvorak of General Mills: “There are many team and individual champions, and we salute their efforts. However, only a select few champions are chosen to be honored on the Wheaties box.”

That was basically a shrug of the shoulders, so it is still a mystery as to why the 2008 World Series champions aren’t enshrined in the cereal aisle at our local supermarket.Maybe if we put our missing Wheaties box on the side of a milk carton it will help us get some answers.

By the way, if you want to complain to General Mills, you can call them at 1-800-248-7310, or submit an e-mail through their Web site, http://www.generalmills.com/.

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Like the “On the Edge” Blog? Hear more of my opinions about Philadelphia sports every Friday at 3:30 p.m. on WBCB 1490 AM during the Coffee with Kahuna show, where, this week, we will talk about the start of Spring Training for the Phillies, and the results from NFL Combine, and how it affects the Eagles’ draft plans.