The Truth About Bobby Bonilla Day.

 

With thanks to Rufus and AboveAverage for reminding me that today is the day.

Ah, Bobby Bo! Who can forget that charming rascal? The man who once threatened Bob Klapisch—on camera—"I'll show you the Bronx!" 

And he wasn't talking about the rat dogs at Yankee Stadium.

Of course we all know the story. Bonilla's agent so bamboozled the Mets' ownership during his hapless, first stop in Shea, as part of "The Worst Team Money Could Buy" team, that each July First, until the end of time through 2035, Bobby gets nearly $1.2 million—thereby turning a $6 million contract into what will be $30 million when the last check is cashed.

Hey, sounds like just another, typical piece of Hapless Mets lore, right?

Well, as the song goes, it ain't necessarily so. 

Bobby Bo himself would make much of the legend, doing commercials, saying "Don't skimp on the agent," and describing him as "a special man." 

And for years afterwards, Fred Wilpon would look down at the ground and shake his head and smile ruefully, over how he and his partner, Saul Katz, had been taken by that "special man"—one Dennis Gilbert, a former insurance agent, who supposedly understood annuities like nobody's business, and suckered the Metsies into deferring Bonilla's money into one such policy.

Uh-huh.

This story smelled from the get-go. 

No disrespect to Dennis Gilbert, who I'm sure was the Merlin of life insurance. But we're supposed to believe that Wilpon and Katz, two self-made men who clawed their way up through the world of New York real estate, and then managed to wrest control of the Mets away from Nelson Doubleday...had nobody who understood annuities?

In fact, there were one, two, many Bobby Bonillas. 

Right now, Bret Saberhagen is receiving $250,000 a year, and will through 2029.  On, I guess, "Bret Saberhagen Day." Bret, who once sprayed a group of reporters with bleach from a Supersoaker, was also a Dennis Gilbert client.

But Daryl Strawberry, who was NOT a Gilbert client, receives $1.64 million every year from the Mets on "Daryl Strawberry Day"—and will through 2033. 

General manager Frank Cashen's salary was also paid in deferments. And there is even a "Bobby Bonilla Day II" payment from the Mets, of $250,000, going back to his second, even more disastrous stint in Queens, in 1999?

So what gives?

Well, mostly Uncle Bernie.

Why would the Mets defer so many salaries, at such a high cost?

Because Wilpon and Katz had invested heavily with Bernie Madoff, the man who made Ponzi look like a piker. Every year, come rain or come shine, they could count on a solid, 18-percent return from Madoff. 

With this sort of guarantee, it made sense for the Mets to defer all kinds of salaries. They were making even more, every year, year after year.

It all came a-cropper, of course, when Madoff went down in the Big Crash. But Wilpon and Katz were more anxious than ever, then, to make out that they'd had been thoroughly suckered by the great Dennis Gilbert. A federal arbiter was looking to claw back most of the money they had made via Uncle Bernie.

Did Wilpon and Katz know that Madoff was the Ponzi de tutti Ponzis?

Almost certainly not. It's hard to believe that they would take so big a risk—or that anyone could believe Madoff was running a total scam on such a scale. No one did, until it fell apart.

Were they suspicious about all those consistently great returns? Well, maybe they thought Uncle Bernie was doing some insider trading. But that would not have fallen on their heads.

Hey, it all worked out. Fred Wilpon—a charming man who loved to sell sportswriters on very dubious stories about himself and his team—got to pretend for years that the Mets couldn't spend money because Madoff had ripped them off. (He didn't.) 

The feds never were able to claw back more than a tiny percentage of what the Mets' partners made by "investing" with Madoff, and Wilpon and Katz ended up selling the team for an immense profit to another operator, this one from Wall Street. 

Win-win. And Bobby Bonilla, and all the rest, still get paid.

The only people who got screwed over were Mets fans. But don't they always?