SHEFFIELD’S WIFE SEXED UP R. KELLY; FEDS SEIZED VIDEO: Gary Sheffield has a new book out called “Inside Power“.

His story is one that every baseball fan knows: Malcontent bouncing from team to team, with no doubt his own version of events that lead to him being discarded over and over again despite prodigious talent.

But shockingly, there actually is an interesting element to Sheffield’s life story that apparently is chronicled in the book, and it involves his wife, DeLeon Richards:

To get some background, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s August 14, 2000, issue featured Jeff Pearlman penning a syrupy piece on Sheffield’s courtship of Richards.

The then-Marlins slugger met her in a hotel lobby in New York, and began a courtship that did not include a kiss for SEVEN MONTHS. Pearlman wrote of Richards at the time, “Her wardrobe was conservative. No plastic pants allowed. She was clearly not a jock hawk. In Sheffield’s world, Richards was…different.

“During the first seven months of their courtship, Richards didn’t allow Sheffield to kiss her. There were awkward hugs and gentle handshakes and combination hug-shakes, but no lip contact.”

Sheffield: “I knew sex before marriage was not going to happen, but I tried. I did my research on DeLeon, and she proved to be everything she said she was.”

Oops. Uh, maybe not, Sheff.

Turns out the Richards wasn’t a “jock hawk”, but a “watersports-and-underage-girl-lusting-rapper hawk”. Before she met Sheffield, she had previously sexed up notorious hip-hop artist R. Kelly, who is infamous for his videotaped sexual liasons with underage girls that often included watersports in the encounters (and I ain’t talkin’ bout inner tubing).

To her credit, Richards obviously played Sheffield like a worn-out banjo at a Branson stage show. But inexplicably, Sheffield remains married to DeLeon to this day and hilariously features his relationship with her prominently in his new book.

Once Sheffield married DeLeon, a street hustler contacted Sheffield and claimed to have a sex tape of Kelly and his new wife.

Sheffield’s reaction: “We were comforted by the absolute knowledge that God’s love for us and His Blessing of our marriage were indestructible. The Calmness pointed to the Proverbs where it says, ‘ Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.’ Morning came. Joy arrived. Faith saw us through.”

Actually, “joy arrived” when Sheffield was informed in 2004 that federal authorities found the tape of his wife and R. Kelly doing the nasty, and prevented it from being released for public consumption.

Richards also confirmed in an earlier interview with AOL that she had had sex with with Kelly, but didn’t know if their intercourse had been recorded on video.

Richards: “I was young, I was in a situation that’s no different than anybody else out there that could’ve made the same mistake. And so for that, I’ve asked God to forgive me and having [sex] outside of being married..”

Safe to say that Sheffield doesn’t go into all the gory details in his book about his wife’s rendezvous with Kelly. It’s also safe to say that the rapper didn’t wait seven months for a kiss.