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Every July 1, retired major league Baseball player Bobby Bonilla receives a direct deposit from the New York Mets despite not having played for the franchise for over a quarter century. Sports fans celebrate this date with a mix of hilarity and absolute bewilderment as Bobby Bonilla Day, universally mocking it as the ultimate symbol of front office incompetence. However, that's not quite true. The contract wasn't a classic met splendor. It was a highly calculated financial maneuver backed by standard accounting logic. Learn more about Bobby Bonilla Day on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Hexclad. Over a year ago, I invested in a set of hexclad cookware. I got a griddle, a stock pot and two frying pans and I have been loving it and I use it almost every single day in my house. Hexclad completely changed the game by combining the performance of stainless steel with the convenience of nonstick in a single pan. Hexclad gives you a proper sear, great heat control and cleanup that doesn't turn into a whole second job after dinner. After I cook something, cleanup is a simple matter of wiping it off or just doing some very light scrubbing. I'm no Gordon Ramsay when it comes to cooking, but there is a good reason why Gordon Ramsay uses Hexclad both at home and in his recip restaurants. Don't go through another summer with cookware that makes every meal harder than it needs to be. For just a limited time only, my listeners get 10% off their order with my exclusive link. Just head to hexclad.com daily support the show and check them out at hexclashad.com daily make sure to let them know I sent you. This episode is sponsored by Quint's Summer's Here, and if you happen to live in a place with actual seasons as I do, that means wearing entirely different clothes. Wool sweaters are great when the temperatures drop, but they're not the best option when you're outside in the sun. Quint's has European linen pants and shirts that are the perfect warm weather upgrade to add to your rotation. Starting at just $34, their T shirts are soft and easy to wear, and their lightweight cotton sweaters are perfect for cool summer nights. I just got two Quint's T shirts myself and I love them as always. Everything at Quint's is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, and they can do that by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middleman so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com daily for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com daily. At the height of his career, Bobby Bonilla was one of the best players in the game. Paired with Barry Bonds, Bonilla was an anchor of the legendary Killer Bees lineup at the Pittsburgh Pirates. He played almost every day, hit for contact, averaged 25 home runs a year, routinely drove in 100 RBIs and led the league in doubles. He was one of the best players in baseball when he became a free agent in 1991. The New York Mets, who were eager to recapture the glory of their 1986 World Series championship, won an intense bidding war for his services and made Bonilla the highest paid player in Major League Baseball history at the time. In fact, he wasn't just the highest paid player in baseball, but he was briefly the highest paid athlete in American sports, making more per season than even Michael Jordan. Mets fans were ecstatic. They signed the best free agent in the game and to top it all off, Bonilla was a New Yorker who was born in the Bronx. The front office put Bonilla on a roster which already featured two Cy Young Award winning pitchers in Doc Gooden and Frank Viola. The Mets fans expected a championship and Bonilla was a microcosm of the New York Mets. The organization made a financial commitment to the roster and fielded a team with the third highest payroll in all of baseball, and despite outspending everyone else in their division, the team finished second to last in Bonilla's first season with them. Bonilla's numbers declined, although he remained a formidable middle of the order hitter for the Mets, but he failed to live up to his status as the highest paid player in the game. Bonilla's 1992 Mets were so disappointing that they inspired a book by New York sports writers Bob Caplish and John Harper titled the Worst Team Money could the collapse of the 1992 New York Mets. He bounced back in 1993 and put together a 34 home run season and he hit for power throughout the rest of his tenure with the team. The Mets eventually traded Bonilla to the Baltimore orioles at the 1995 trade deadline. His value had skyrocketed given the strong start he had to the first half of the 1995 season. The trade netted the Mets two of the better outfield prospects in baseball in Alex Ochoa and Damon Buford. Bonilla played strong for the rest of the year and helped lead the Orioles into the postseason. Blaming Bonilla for the Mets collapse during his tenure is unfair. His performance was only slightly below what he had established in Pittsburgh and he made the All Star team with the Mets in 1993. Following his trade to the Orioles, Bonilla put together several productive seasons before finally fading. Despite his declining performance, Bonilla returned to the Mets for the 1999 season. In 1997, the Mets had brought reliever Mel Rojas to New York from the Montreal exposure. He had a good arm and the Mets thought that they could rejuvenate his career. But the Rojas experiment was a disaster. In fact, late in 1998, the Mets wanted to move him so badly that they traded him to the Dodgers for a rapidly declining Bobby Bonilla and his nearly $6 million contract. The Mets thought that 35 year old Bonilla could recapture his previous power. However, the Mets were wrong. Very wrong. Bonilla's 1999 season was a disaster. Not only did he fail to play at his previous high level, but Bonilla produced at levels so low that they almost defy explanation. Through 60 games, Bonilla hit a remarkably bad.160 with just four home runs and played defense so poorly that it became difficult to put him on the roster. Bobby Valentine, who was an old school manager, managed the 1999 New York Mets. He was known for his brilliant baseball mind and his highly charismatic yet volatile leadership style, and Bonilla and Valentine frequently clashed. New York was the worst place for the clash of the Bobbies to take place as media scrutiny of their feud was relentless. With Bonilla's on field performance cratering, Valentine had no choice but to bench him and Bonilla did not take it well. During an extra inning game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Bonilla refused to go into the game as a pinch hitter. The confrontation between Valentine and Bonilla continued to simmer, reaching a boiling point when, during the deciding game of the 1999 National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves, Bobby Bonilla and Rickey Henderson retreated to the clubhouse to play cards rather than watch the game from the dugout. According to Bonilla, the Cards distracted a furious Henderson after Valentine pulled him from the game several innings earlier. Regardless of why Bonilla and Henderson ended up in the clubhouse, the damage was done. Bonilla had become a pariah on the team with a toxic relationship with the manager and an obviously declining skill set. Bonilla gave the Mets every reason to move on from him, the Mets explored a possible buyout of the deal at the end of the season, but the card game accelerated their urgency. Knowing the organization wanted a buyout, Bonilla's agent, DE Dennis Gilbert, proposed a unique solution to free up cash flow now and avoid dead money on the roster. Gilbert suggested deferring payments in an annuity like structure. Gilbert had a long history in the insurance business, and deferring the payments made sense for both his client and the Met's organization. Bonilla had made nearly $50 million during his playing career, and given his flexibility, Gilbert knew his client could live comfortably until the deferments kicked in. Gilbert approached the Mets with a unique take the $5.9 million base salary, add 8% interest every year and begin payments in 2011 spread out over 25 years. Gilbert's proposal increased the total value of the remaining contract to nearly $30 million, while providing the Mets with flexibility to use the money immediately to improve a roster that almost made the World Series. It offered a win win solution for everyone. Bonilla would receive a yearly payment of $1.2 million from 2011 through 2035. The Mets would pay Bonilla for the work he did back when he was in his 30s until he turned 72, and the payment is received every year on July 1. When asked about the decision to defer the payments in a 2008 interview with the New York Post, Bonilla described it clearly by saying, it's a beautiful thing. An obscure detail about the Mets Bobby Bonilla day is that he and Gilbert also secured a similar arrangement from the Baltimore Orioles. Unlike the Mets deal, the Oriole contract didn't stem from a buyout after a performance crash. It formed part of his original contract when he joined the Orioles in 1995. Bonilla and the Orioles agreed to restructure the $6 million owed for his 1996 season into a deferred agreement with with payments of $500,000 due every July 1 from 2004 to 2028. When all is said and done, Bobby Bonilla will have earned more than $42 million from deferred contract payments and accrued interest on about just $12 million in base salary. So why did the Mets find this deal attractive? It all had to do with the 8% interest that the deal assumed. Met's co owner and primary decision maker Fred Wilpon was earning returns of 10% or higher every year. He was able to get such returns because of his brilliant investment manager Bernie Madoff. Wilpon figured that he could take the 5.9 million and put it into Madoff's hands. And after the contract duration, the investment would generate several hundreds of millions of dollars based on the returns that Madoff had promised him. The Mets also knew that they had nearly reached the World Series and that they could repurpose the 6 million in salary to improve the ball club. The Mets actually came close to their goals. The Mets targeted American League Cy Young runner up Mike Hampton in a blockbuster five player trade. To offset the salary increase, the Mets allocated part of the Bonilla buyout. Hampton was coming off one of the best pitching performances in recent memory. He finished 22:4 with a 2.89 ERA and provided exactly what the Mets needed at the top of their rotation. And Hampton didn't disappoint. He pitched extremely well in the 2000 season, leading the Mets to the World Series on the back of a remarkable playoff run. The Mets 2000 season ended with a loss to the Yankees in the famous Subway Series, and I actually attended game five, the final game of the World Series that year at Shea Stadium. But that's another story. The Hampton experience continued to reap rewards for the Mets. He turned down a lucrative contract offer from the Mets in the off season after the World Series and signed a bigger deal with the Rockies. As a result, the Mets got a draft pick in return from the Rockies in the next draft. Hampton's departure gave The Mets the 38th pick in the 2001 draft, which was used to draft David Wright. Wright played for the Mets for 14 years and became a fixture on the Mets roster. From a baseball perspective, the Bonilla deferment actually worked to the Mets advantage and they did manage to win a National League championship. Financially, the situation was quite a bit different. As you probably know, Bernie Madoff wasn't the investing genius that everyone thought he was. He was literally running a classic Ponzi scheme. In 2008, Madoff's scheme fell apart, crippling the Wilpon family fortune and by extension, the New York Mets. To complicate matters, a series of lawsuits in 2011 alleged that the Mets owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, fueled the fraud by ignoring the obvious red flags of Madoff's scheme. In 2012, both sides settled the lawsuit out of court for $162 million. The terms of the suit created a complicated byzantine framework that limited Wilpon's liability, but severely damaged the Mets financial stability. The settlement saved the Wilpon family from bankruptcy, but it had massive implications for the New York Mets finances. In the wake of the decision, the Mets slashed payroll by unprecedented amounts and began selling the team off in 4% blocks to raise revenue. Hedge fund manager Steve Cohen stepped in as one of the early investors. Cohen bought a 4% stake for $20 million. Ownership sold these blocks to give the Mets the financial flexibility to stay afloat. While the damaged management team sought to save their investment, Cohen gradually bought additional stakes, culminating in a breakthrough deal following the Will Pond's 2020 auction of the team. Cohen purchased the Mets for $2.4 billion and in the process inherited the Bobby Bonilla contract. Unlike the Willpons, Cohen leaned into it, adopting the famous adage that no press is bad press. When asked about it in 2020 by a fan on Twitter, Cohen dismissed a buyout of the Bonilla contract and instead offered a more hilarious solution. He said, let's take a vote. How about we have a Bobby Bonilla Day every year, hand him an oversized check and drive a lap around the stadium? Could be fun. Every July 1st, the baseball world takes note of Bobby Bonilla and his infamous contracts. Today, these deferred contracts have become more common, best illustrated by the historic deal Shohei Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. While his contract expires in 2033, it pushes an astonishing $680 million into the future, distributing $68 million annually from 2034 to 2043. And given his performance, Dodger fans likely won't struggle with Ohtani's deferments. Bobby Bonilla Day endures because it's more than just a quirky baseball contract. It's a story about money, patience, risk and the strange ways that financial decisions can outlast careers and owners. For Bobby Bonilla, it became one of the smartest deals any athlete ever made. And for the Mets, it became an annual reminder that sometimes the most memorable moments in sports history happen not on the field, but in the fine print. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast. As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, you too can have it running the show.