Paris Hilton is extremely famous, therefore Barry Zito is still on the Oakland A’s.

This argument, admittedly, is a stretch, but I’m quite curious how much traffic I’ll get by putting Paris Hilton in my headline.

As the winter meetings closed last week, we were told that the rumored Milton Bradley-to-the-A’s, the Barry Zito-to-the-Mets, and the David Wells-to-the-A’s deals were all dead.

Then suddenly, Milton Bradley was on the A’s. The deal not quite as dead as we thought. So are those other deals still on the table, too?

In interviews after the Bradley trade, Billy Beane would neither confirm nor deny any possible further trades. He would only say that he’s happy with the team as it stands. Which means nothing.

As we understood it at the time, Zito would go to the Mets for Lastings Milledge and some other players, after the Mets cleared some payroll and roster spots. The A’s would then trade for David Wells to fill Zito’s rotation spot.

It almost happened. The Mets got close to trading Kris Benson to the Royals, clearing roster space, and giving them the kind of middle reliever the Mets wanted, either for themselves, or to trade to Oakland. But the deal fell through. Why?

Apparently, Kris Benson’s wife Anna is somewhat to blame. Anna Benson wants badly to be the next Paris Hilton. She wants to get famous, like Hilton, by dressing provocatively, and acting outrageously. But if it’s your dream to be chased around by the paparazzi all day, you want to live where the cameras are. And that ain’t Kansas City. As MLB trade rumors put it:

The Mets don’t have the upper hand in any possible Kris Benson trade, so teams are backing off and offering less value. The feeling is that Anna Benson’s media tirades are precluding small market teams from acquiring her husband. Anna has definitely decreased Kris’s value around baseball. She knows that her career will stall if they end up in a place like Kansas City, so she’ll do anything she can to stay in New York.

So Mets’ GM Omar Minaya’s job has gotten harder. But the buzz still lingers that Minaya is still shopping around, trying to put together the pieces that will satisfy Billy Beane.

And as long as David Wells remains a Boston Red Sox (Wells has said he wants to be traded to the West Coast, or he’ll retire), you gotta believe that the Barry Zito trade is still very much on the table.