Every Friday, 7IS Contributor Ryan Henning will take a look at what’s happening in the life of a former, possibly forgotten player. You may not think it’s important, but it must be important to someone.

Yep… That guy was a major league baseball player. Before Ryan Howard, there was the exact opposite baseball player David Howard. In what ways was he opposite? Well, Ryan Howard is a power hitter, and David Howard is not a hitter at all, not even when he was in the minor leagues. Ryan won a World Series. David played for the Royals. Ryan has been the subject of trade rumors as he approaches the end of his contract. The Royals seemingly couldn’t get rid of David.

My favorite part about David Howard is that the Kansas City Royals blogging community can pinpoint Howard as particularly mediocre, even when considering their recent history. In their list of top 100 Royals of all time, he ranked at #84, and he apologizes to players like Jorge Orta, because Howard ranked higher than him. That’s pretty humbling, I imagine, when someone wants to make it clear that Jorge Orta is a better baseball player than you. I’m not sure Jorge Orta is a better player than David Chalk.

In perhaps the longest interview ever granted to a poor utility infield, we find out that as of 2007 he was a member of the Red Sox scouting staff, perhaps warning the Sox against players that were similar to him. They would hate to end up like the St. Louis Cardinals, who actually signed him as a free agent in 1997 and let him play for 2 seasons.