86: Mets Wives: Anna Other Thing

(This is the first installment in an ongoing series at Y2K focusing on topics raised in Matthew Silverman's "100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die". Today's installment? Number 86: Mets Wives: Anna Other Thing.)

Why 86? Once I decided I wouldn't do all of these in order, there was nowhere else to start.

On a scale of 1-to-10, necessity of knowing or doing before you die? 2.

Ahh, Anna Benson. I remember those halcyon days when she first came to New York.

It was the fateful summer of 2004. The Mets were just decent enough to convince ownership that a couple of well-played trades could swing the NL East in their favor. Scott Kazmir was about to become an ex-Met and Jim Duquette was about to punch his ticket out of town. It was good to be alive.

"Not to digress into the tabloid and infotainment [infotainment!] world," Silverman writes (page 221), "but the wives of several Mets have kept fans entertained over the years."

He then proceeds to name, hrmm, four: Nancy Seaver, Nancy Lopez, Ruth Ryan, and everyone's favorite, Anna Ballgame.

Honestly, the Bensons would have been a nice story if Anna hadn't been so crude. He was the shy kid with a million dollar arm and a five dollar head. She was the barmaid who loved horses and her boyfriend (sweet, naive Kris), too. The couple married in 1999 after 9 months of dating (natch).

But Anna wasn't a sweet girl by any stretch. What's disappointing about this chapter is that, focusing on Anna Benson as it does, it doesn't mention her single greatest moment as a Mets wife, the time when she appeared on Howard Stern and pledged to sleep with every member of the Mets organization, including the groundsmen, if Kris ever had an affair. (In fairness, that story may be entirely too risque for the audience Silverman was trying to attract.)

Thankfully, Anna Benson's other shining moment, the Christmas Party where she dressed up as a sexy elf or sexy Mrs. Clause or something for an audience of, I don't know, pediatric cancer patients, does get mentioned.

It's funny, when I think of the Bensons now, I like to think it's a shining example of how far this organization has come. That said, I had to give it a pretty low score on the necessity of knowing or doing meter. Anna Benson just seems like a novelty item, she doesn't seem classic in any way, though I suppose she might 30 years from now.

More importantly though, come on, no mention of Rick Reed's wife, Dee Reed? I mean, the woman had a palindrome for a name. That's infotainment!

- A.F.O.M.G.