For many of us today is just the first day of July.
But for longtime baseball fans, happy Bobby Bonilla Day!
The six-time All-Star had signed a deal with the New York Mets in 1991 worth $29 million, the biggest deal in sports up to that point.
But after three and a half sometimes difficult years with the Mets, Bonilla ended up moving to a series of other teams.
He eventually ended up back with the Mets, where he was cut from the team in early 2000.
The thing was, the Mets still owed Bonilla $5.9 million from that contract.
He proposed that the team defer the money for about a decade, but the Mets had something bigger in mind.
They suggested deferring the money even further out and paying him back with interest from 2011 to 2035.
In all, the player would end up with close to $30 million.
And the Mets put the $5.9 million in remaining Bonilla money into an investment account that 1) would earn so much interest it would earn the team a profit and 2) would count toward their payroll.
Under baseball’s salary rules, the Mets could put more money toward current players instead of toward ones that weren’t on their roster anymore.
The catch was, the team had invested with Bernie Madoff, the head of what turned out to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
When Madoff’s “investments” fell apart, the team’s bookkeepers had a headache on their hands.
But it was still on the hook for the deferred salary!
Ponzi scheme or no Ponzi scheme, each July 1, the Mets pay Bobby Bonilla $1,193,248.20.
Those payments will keep coming until Bonilla is 72.
Not only that, Bonilla has a second deferred payment deal with another former team.
The Baltimore Orioles are sending him a half a million dollars every July 1 through 2028.
So you have to wonder if the Bonilla household is all going out for pizza or whatever tonight.
Today in 1997, Len Libby’s Chocolates in Maine unveiled its most iconic creation, Lenny the chocolate moose.
It’s a sculpture of a full-size moose, made of 1,700 pounds of chocolate.
And they keep the back room at just the right temperature to keep him from turning into a chocolate puddle.
What is Bobby Bonilla Day? Explaining why the former Met gets paid $1.19M every July 1 (ESPN)
Lenny the Moose (Len Libby)
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Photo by 401kcalculator.org via Flickr/Creative Commons
