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.

Steve Henderson spent most of his playing career with the Mets, but could perhaps be best remembered for his coming and going from the team. He was originally drafted by the Reds before getting traded to the Mets as part of the Tom Seaver trade. 4 seasons later, he was traded away from the team for Dave Kingman. That said, he was an up and down hitter who never really hit for power.
Of course, that meant that when his 11 year, 5 team career was over, he would be hired as a hitting coach. He coached with the Astros and perhaps most ironically of all, he reached his first post season as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays. A .280 hitter with a career high of 12 home runs reached the World Series as a hitting coach. Go figure.
What else is there to know about Steve Henderson?

- He was the first hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, then was gone for about 10 seasons before he came back. Dave Silvestri’s hitting prowess is owed entirely to Steve Henderson.

- He played for a while in something called the Senior Professional Baseball League. 10 years later, it changed it’s name to the San Francisco Giants.

- He was second in Rookie of the Year Voting to Andre Dawson. There will never bee a controversy about his Hall of Fame election, though. Steve Henderson will only get into the Hall of Fame if he’s part of the tour.

Once upon a time, my Saturday mornings used to be very productive. I’d wake up, happy about not having to go to work. I’d go jogging, maybe play some basketball, get some shopping done, pay some bills. Saturday mornings acted as a kick-start to a relaxing weekend, a time where I could just plain get stuff done. Then the MLB Network came into my life.

Let’s take last weekend. I woke up, got ready to go out and do stuff, when I realized that the station was showing a replay of a 1984 Cardinals-Cubs game in its entirety. It was a famous game, a 12-11 Wrigley Field slugfest, as Ryne Sandberg went 5 for 6 and hit not one, but two game-tying home runs off of ace reliever Bruce Sutter. Retro baseball nerd that I am (and child of the ’80′s), I figured, hell, there would be no harm in putting off my chores and catching an hour of this classic game.

Three hours later, I was still in front of the couch, having barely moved an inch. Fine, that’s just one game, I told myself, and it was awesome. I’m a better person for having watched it, and it just means the stuff I have to do will wait another hour or so. Fair enough. No harm done. Now let’s just got on with my…

Wait. What’s on next? Gaylord Perry’s 300th victory against the Yankees in 1983? Every single inning? Oh, lordy. Three more hours pass, it’s now close to five in the afternoon, the sun is down, and that productive Saturday has fallen by the wayside. Oh, but wait! Tom Seaver’s 300th win is next on the docket. The anti-social fun never ends!

You can see how self-destructive this can be, and it gets worse when you realize that the never-ending cavalcade of classic baseball continues on through Sunday. MLB Network is probably the best and worst thing to happen to me in quite some time. For a guy who grew up scanning old Baseball Almanacs, drooling over box scores from 1980′s playoff series, this is like a gold mine. I seriously can’t wait until they replay the 1989 NLCS, or the 1986 World Series. I think my head might explode watching those games.

At the same time, I’ve wasted so much time over the past months sitting around watching this crap that I probably could have written the Great American Novel or something with all the tiime spent in front of the TV. I’d say that 90 percent of the time that my TV is on when I’m at home, it’s tuned to the MLB Network. That’s crazy and sad, yet true.

As evil and wretched a company as Comcast is, they have me by the balls with this stupid thing. Even when I’m doing stuff around the apartment, I’ll have MLB Network on in the background, listening to what Mitch Williams or Billy Ripken have to say (hint: not a whole hell of a lot). It’s an addiction, pure and simple, and I guess the first step to recovery is admitting I have a problem. Perhaps some day I’ll have what alcoholics refer to as a “moment of clarity”, or maybe my concerned friends will stage an intervention like with Peter Griffin and his big green foam cowboy hat. For now, though, my days of being a productive human being are in danger, and it’s all because of this stupid 24-hour baseball network.