Last Updated: June 17th, 2026 by Jake Cain
Each July 1, the Mets owe Bobby Bonilla $1,193,248.20 under a deferred-compensation agreement reached when they released him before the 2000 season. The payments began in 2011 and continue through 2035, long after Bonilla played his final major-league game for St. Louis in 2001.
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The annual date is commonly called Bobby Bonilla Day. It is not payment for current baseball work; it is the scheduled payoff of $5.9 million in deferred compensation that remained on the final season of Bonilla’s contract.
The agreement calls for 25 equal payments from July 1, 2011, through July 1, 2035. At $1,193,248.20 each, the full scheduled payout is $29,831,205.
The payment is one annual installment, not a daily wage. Dividing it by 365 produces about $3,269, but the Mets do not send Bonilla money each day.
Bonilla earned four straight All-Star selections with Pittsburgh from 1988 through 1991 before signing a record-setting five-year, $29 million Mets contract on December 3, 1991. By average annual salary, the deal made him the highest-paid athlete in North American team sports at the time.
Bonilla’s Mets record was more mixed than the live copy suggests. He made two All-Star teams during his first New York stint before being traded to Baltimore in July 1995. After returning to the Mets for 1999, he batted .160 in 60 games; the club released him on January 3, 2000. The live claim about playing cards during a decisive playoff game is omitted because it is not needed to explain the contract and is not established by the official career account.
When the Mets released Bonilla, his contract still had one season and $5.9 million remaining. Rather than pay that amount immediately, the sides restructured the obligation into a deferred schedule.
The agreement applied an 8 percent annual rate and delayed the first installment until 2011. It then spread the balance across 25 payments, producing the exact annual amount associated with Bobby Bonilla Day.
The $29.83 million total follows directly from 25 contract installments at $1,193,248.20 each; it was not recalculated when Madoff’s scheme collapsed years later. The live copy conflated the owners’ separate investment history with the contract’s dates and dollar amounts.
Deferred compensation is common in baseball, but Bonilla’s fixed July 1 installment became especially visible because the schedule began a decade after his final major-league game. As of July 1, 2026, sixteen of the 25 payments had come due, leaving nine annual installments through 2035.
The embedded ESPN and FiveThirtyEight video explains how the deferred agreement was structured and why a 2000 obligation became an annual payment from 2011 through 2035.
For Bonilla, July 1 is the payment date the contract guarantees. For the Mets, it is a long-running obligation that will end with the 25th installment in 2035, not an open-ended annual expense.
