Functionally ReTodded

I had a friend and roomate years ago who was cousins with then Pirate shortstop Jay Bell. Jay was a good ball player who did the little things well. He led the league in sacrifice bunts for several years, played steady defense and always used his head.

Jay credited much of his success to his wife, who got him to do some funny things on the field. One of the funniest was when she saw him strike out and read his lips while he was in the middle of a tirade on camera. She told him that kids were watching, and that if he wanted to swear like that, he should do it into his hat or glove.

Later, there was not much funnier than tuning into a Pirates game and seeing Jay strike out, just so he would yank his helmet off, cover his face, and you could see his head bob up and down as he was screaming into it.

Move forward to 2004, and Jay (in the twilight or more of his career), signs a minor league deal with the Mets, the same team that signed former Pirate pitching star Kris Benson to a big contract just a couple of weeks ago. The fact that these two are both ex-pirates is where the similarities end.

It seems that Mrs. Benson is a former model and stripper and has three kids with Mr. Benson. She is taking credit for negotiating much of the deal he got with the Mets. She also issued this amusing statement / challenge in the New York Post just this week. Here is an exerpt:

ANNA Benson, the former model and stripper who is married to Mets pitcher Kris Benson, vowed yesterday that if she ever catches her husband cheating, she’ll have sex with all his teammates.

The buxom brunette, proclaimed “Baseball’s Hottest Wife” by FHM magazine, said on Howard Stern’s nationally syndicated radio show:

“I told him [Kris] — because that’s the biggest thing in athletics, they cheat all the time — I told him, cheat on me all you want. If you get caught, I’m going to s- - -w everybody on your entire team — coaches, trainers, players. I would do everybody on his whole team.”

“Mike Piazza just did a back flip,” Stern said, egging her on. “Even the coaches? What about, like, the bat boys?”

“Everybody would get a turn,” Anna pledged. “If my husband cheated on me and embarrassed me like that, I will embarrass him more than he could ever imagine.”

Even Robin Quivers got in on it: “What about groundskeepers?”

“If I’m lining them up,” Anna said, “I’ll [also] circle into other teams. Whatever team he’s playing, I will s- - -w all them too.”

Stern asked: “What if your husband, the great pitcher, comes to you and says, ‘Honey, I need two women at the same time. I need you to do that for me?’ ”

Anna replied, “You know, if that’s what he came to me and said that he needed, then that’s what he would get, because he is my entire universe. I adore my husband. He’s a saint . . . he took me out of hell” — a reference to her years on her own.

She added that she and Benson are so into each other, they’ve had sex in many of the stadiums where he’s pitched, including PNC Park and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

“We’re very busy because we have three children,” she said. “You know what, whenever we get the time to do it, we do it. If it happens to be there, that’s where we do it.

“I take total care of him,” Anna continued, taking credit for the negotiations for Benson’s most recent contract that guarantees him $22.5 million over three years, with an option for 2008 that would push the total package to $29.5 million.

“I helped with negotiations . . . I went back and forth a lot with that. He didn’t even have anything to do with that. I did that deal . . . I laid out a lot of the terms.”

Umm…what? You are threatening your husband by saying if he cheats on you, you’ll gang bang the National League? Wow. Where’s Doug Christie’s wife when we need her?