Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Bobby Bonilla Day

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Every July 1st, retired Major League Baseball player Bobby Bonilla receives a direct deposit from the New York Mets despite not having played for the franchise for a quarter of a 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. This contract wasn’t a classic Mets blunder; 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. Sponsors Saily Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code everythingeverywhere at checkout. Download the Saily app or go to https://saily.com/everythingeverywhere ButcherBox Get your choice between chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, PLUS $20 off when you go to ButcherBox.com/everything Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED TrueWerk Get 15% off your first order at truewerk.com with code everything DripDrop Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code everything for 20% off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every July 1st, 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 state 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 Mets blunder. It was a highly calculated financial maneuver backed by standard accounting Logic. Learn more about Bobby Bonia Day on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. 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 Bs lineup of 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 played 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, Baniya was a New Yorker who was born in the Bronx. The front office put Bonilla on a roster which already featured two Saly Young Award winning pitchers in Doc Gooden and Frank Viola. The Mets fans expected a championship. And Binea 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 Bania's first season with them. Bania'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. Benea's 1992 Mets were so disappointing that they inspired a book by New York sports writers Bob Kaplish and John Harper titled The Worst Team Money Could by 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 Bania 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. Benia played strong for the rest of the year and helped leave the U. Orioles into the postseason. Blaming Bonilla for the Mets collapsed 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 expert, 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. Baniya'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 Benia's on-field performance cratering, Valentine had no choice but to bench him, and Benia 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 Benia 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 Ricky 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, 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 Mets organization. Benia 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 offer. Take the $5.9 million-based salary, add 8% interest every year, and begin payments in 2011, spread out over 25 years. 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. Binea would receive a yearly payment of $1.2 million from 2011 through 2035. The Mets would pay B'Nea 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 1st.

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 did. join the Orioles. In 1995, Bonilla and the Orioles agreed to restructure the $6 million owed for his

1996 season into a deferred agreement with payments of $500,000 due every July 1st 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's 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 and 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 5, the final game of the World Series, that year, at Chase, 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 offseason 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 Bania 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 of 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 Wilpon'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 Will Pons, 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, quote, 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. End quote. 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 Otani signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. While his contract expires in 233,

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 Otani'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, if it came to be able to be able to be able to be able to be.

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 in 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. And 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 run in the show.