Pat White Joins List Of Royals Who Were More Famous For Something Else

It looks as though Pat White, who received Heisman consideration in 2008 while quarterbacking West Virginia and spent the 2009 season deep in the Miami Dolphins’ depth chart, is set to sign with baseball’s Kansas City Royals. White’s signing would be the latest chapter in a history of Royals employees who, whether before or after their career in KC, were more famous for something else.

Let’s take a look:

Bo Jackson. He was offensively valuable and defensively spectacular for the Royals, yes, but he averaged 5.4 yards per carry throughout his career with the Raiders, and could very well have ended up in the Hall of Fame were it not for his hip injury.

Rush Limbaugh. He was the Royals’ director of promotions in the early 1980s before eventually becoming one of the most influential people in America. My personal opinion of Rush is as follows: he [is a radio personality and enjoys smoking cigars]!

Buck O’Neil. He was a scout for the Royals in the 1980s and ‘90s, but is best known for working to honor the historical significance of the Negro Leagues, and for telling us that no matter what the powers that be do to baseball, they “just can’t kill it.” Buck O’Neil was basically the greatest man who ever lived.

David Glass. Glass is the owner and CEO of the Kansas City Royals, but he’s in the Retail Hall of Fame for his tenure as the President and COO of Wal-Mart, a period in which the retail chain expanded from a few dozen stores to a few thousand. Glass is another Royals employee who, for better or worse, changed America.

Chris Cooper. Decades before winning an Academy Award for his role in Adaptation, Cooper was on the construction crew that built Royals Stadium (later Kauffman Stadium). He is perhaps the only person to work for both a Ewing Kauffman project and a Charlie Kaufman project.

There may be others I’m forgetting, but I’ll go ahead and note that, while they didn’t sign, the Royals drafted both Dan Marino and John Elway in 1979. These guys went on to star in television commercials.

Read more about the Royals at SB Nation’s blog, Royals Review.