The Legend of Bobby Bonilla Day

Every july first, retired major league baseball player Bobby Muni receives a direct deposit from the New York Meds despite not having played for the franchise for over a quarter century. Sports fans celebrate this state with a mix of hilarity and absolute bewilderment as Bobby Boniade , universally mocking it as the ultimate symbol of front office and competence. However, that's not quite true. The contract wasn't a classic met splunder, it was a highly calculated financial maneuver backed by standard accounting logic. Learn more about Bobby Bunya 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 stockpot, 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 perform ance of stainless steel with the convenience of non stick in a single pan. 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That's Q INC E. com slash daily for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns quince dot com slash daily at the height of his career, Bobby Bunier was one of the best players in the game. Paired with Barry Bonds, Bunnia was an anchor of the legendary Killer Bees lineup of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He played almost every day, hit for contact, averaged twenty five home runs a year, routinely drove in one hundred RBIs and led the League and Doubles. He was one of the best players in baseball when he became a free agent in nineteen ninety one. The New York Mets, who were eager to recapture the glory of their nineteen eighty six World Series championship , won an intense bidding war for his services, and made Bunia 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. Met's fans were ecstatic. They signed the best free agent in the game, and to top it all off, Bonia was a New Yorker who was born in the Bronx. The front office put Bonia on a roster which already featured two Saeong Award winning pitchers in Doc Gooden and Frank Viola. The Met's fans expected a championship . Embania was a microcosm of the New York Meds. 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 Benia's first season with them. Benia'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. Benia's nineteen ninety two 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 Buy, The Clapse of the nineteen ninety two New York Mets . He bounced back in nineteen ninety three and put together a thirty four home run season, and he hit for power throughout the rest of his tenure with the team. The Metz eventually traded Benia to the Baltimore Orioles at the nineteen ninety five trade deadline. His value had skyrocketed given the strong start he had to the first half of the nineteen ninety five season. The trade netted the Met's two of the better outfield pro spects in baseball and Alex Ochoa and Damon Buford. Bonia played strong for the rest of the year and helped lead the Orioles into the postseason . Blaming Bonia for the Met's 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 nineteen ninety three. Following his trade to the Orioles, Bena put together several productive seasons before finally fading. Despite his declining performance, Benia returned to the Metz for the nineteen ninety nine season. In nineteen ninety seven, the Metz had brought reliever Mel Rohas to New York from the Montreal Expos. 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 nineteen ninety eight the Met's wanted to move him so badly that they traded him to the Dodgers for a rapidly declining Bobby Bonia and his nearly six million dollars contract . The Met's thought that thirty five year old Bunia could recapture his previous power . However, the Met's were wrong , very wrong. Bonia's nineteen ninety nine season was a disaster. Not only did he fail to play at his previous high level, but Benia produced at levels so low that they almost defy explanation. Through sixty games, Ben hitja a remarkably bad one sixty 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 nineteen ninety nine New York Mets . He was known for his brilliant baseball mind and his highly charismatic yet volatile leadership style, and Bonia 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 Benia's on field performance cratering, Valentine had no choice but to bench him and Benia did not take it well. During an extra ending game against the Toronto Bluejays, Bonia refused to go into the game as a pinch hitter. The confrontation between Valentine and Bonia continued to simmer, reaching a boiling point when, during the deciding game of the nineteen ninety nine National League Championship series against the Atlanta Braves, Bobby Bonier and Ricky Henderson retreated to the clubhouse to play cards rather than watch the game from the dugout. According to Bonia, the cards distracted a furious Henderson after Valentine pulled him from the game several endings earlier. Regardless of why Bunnia and Henderson ended up in the clubhouse, the damage was done. Bunia had become a pariah on the team . With a toxic relationship with the manager and an obviously declining skill set, Benia gave the Metz every reason to move on from him. The Metz 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, Benia's agent, 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. Binia had made nearly fifty million dollars during his playing career and given his flexibility, Gilbert knew his client could live comfortably until the deferments kicked in. Gilbert approached the Metz with a unique offer. Take the five point nine million dollars based salary , add eight percent interest every year , and begin payments in twenty eleven , spread out over twenty five years. Gilbert's proposal increased the total value of the remaining contract to nearly thirty million dollars , while providing the Met's 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, Benia would receive a yearly payment of one point two million dollars from twenty eleven through twenty thirty five. The Metz would pay Benia for the work he did back when he was in his thirties until he turned seventy two . And the payment is received every year on july first . When asked about the decision to defer the payments in a two thousand eight interview with the New York Post, Beniia described it clearly by saying It's a beautiful thing . An obscure detail about the Met's Bobby Bonier Day is that he and Gilbert also secured a similar arrangement from the Baltimore Orioles. Unlike the Met's deal, the Oriel contract didn't stem from a buyout after a performance crash . It formed part of his original contract when he joined the Orioles. In nineteen ninety five, Bonia and the Orioles agreed to restructure the six million dollars owed for his nineteen ninety six season into a deferred agreement with payments of five hundred thousand due every july first from two thousand four to twenty twenty eight . When all is said and done, Bobby Bunier will have earned more than forty two million dollars from deferred contract payments and accrued interest on about just twelve million dollars in base salary . So why did the METS find this deal attractive? It all had to do with the eight percent interest that the deal assumed. Met's co owner and primary decision maker Fred Wilpon was earning returns of ten percent or higher every year . He was able to get such returns because of his brilliant investment manager , Bernie Madoff . Will Pont figured that he could take the five point nine million dollars 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 Met's also knew that they had nearly reached the World Series, and that they could repurpose the six million in salary to improve the ball club. The Mets actually came close to their goals. The Metz targeted American League Sai young runner up Mike Hampton in a blockbuster five player trade. To offset the salary increase, the Met's allocated part of the Bunia buyout. Hampton was coming off one of the best pitching performances in recent memory. He finished twenty two in four with a two point eight nine 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 two thousand season, leading the Mets to the World Series on the back of a remarkable playoff run. The Met's two thousand season ended with a loss to the Yankees in the famous subway series , and I actually attended g ame five, the final game of the World Series that year at Shay 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 M in theet offz season after the World Series and signed a bigger deal with the Rockies. As a result, the Metz got a draft pick in return from the Rockies in the next draft. Hampton's departure gave the Metz the thirty eighth pick in the two thousand one draft , which was used to draft David Wright . Wright played for the Metz for fourteen years and became a fixture on the Met's roster. From a baseball perspective, the Beni defermentn actually worked to the Met's adv antage, 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 was. He literally running a classic Ponzi scheme. In two thousand eight, Madoff's scheme fell apart, crippling the Willpon family fortune, and by extension, the New York Mets . To complicate matters, a series of lawsuits in twenty eleven alleged that the Met's owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz fueled the fraud by ignoring the obvious red flags of Madoff's scheme. In twenty twelve, both sides settled the lawsuit out of court for one hundred sixty two million dollars . The terms of the suit created a complicated Byzantine framework that limited Willpon's liability but severely damaged the Met's financial stability. The settlement saved the Wilp in family from bankruptcy, but it had massive implications for the New York Met's finances. In the wake of the decision, the Met slashed payroll by unprecedented amounts and began selling the team off in four percent blocks to raise revenue . Hedge fund manager Steve Cohen stepped in as one of the early investors. Cohen bought a four percent stake for twenty million dollars . Ownership sold these blocks to give the Metz 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 Willpons twenty twenty auction of the team. Cohen purchased the Metz for two point four billion dollars and in the process, inherited the Bobby Bonia contract. Unlike the Will Pons, Cohen leaned into it, adopting the famous adage that No Press is Bad Press. When asked about it in twenty twenty by a fan on Twitter, Cohen dismissed a buyout of the Bunia contract and instead offered a more hilarious solution. He said, quote, let's take a vote. How about we have a bobby Bunia day every year? Hand him an oversized check and drive a lap around the stadium. Could be fun. End quote . Every july first, the baseball world takes note of Bobby Bonia and his infamous contracts. Today, these deferred contracts have become more common, best illustrated by the historic deal Shohei Otani signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers . While its contract expires in twenty thirty three, it pushes an astonishing six hundred eighty million dollars into the future