Why the Mets Pay Bobby Bonilla $1.19 Million Every July 1st. (and will until 2035)

It's Friday, July 1, and we should be thinking about our Fourth of July weekend plans. But as baseball fans, we can't. Why? Because today is all about Bobby Bonilla.

A man who last played 5,381 days ago owns this day. Not just this July 1, but every July 1 through 2035. It's the day when the New York Mets pay him $1,193,248.20.

So with the water cooler and Twitter buzzing about the Bonilla deal, here's your primer.

How did the deal present itself?

Deferred-money deals have been going on for a long time, but the Mets did more of them than most. The first deferred-money deal we know about is Darryl Strawberry's 1985 contract, in which the Mets deferred 40 percent of his 1990 $1.8 million team option ($700,000) at a 5.1 percent interest rate. The deal, which pays out $1.64 million from 2004 to 2033, was obtained through a life insurance company.

Bonilla's agent, Dennis Gilbert, was an insurance agent at the same time he developed into a superagent (Gilbert's clients included Bonilla, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Danny Tartabull), so he was more uniquely prepared to understand annuity-type payouts than other agents.

How does the deal actually work?

The Mets owed Bonilla $5.9 million for the 2000 season and no longer wanted him. So the club negotiated with Gilbert to attach an 8 percent annual interest rate to that money. With the clock starting in 2000, that adds up to $29.8 million. The first installment of the payout came on July 1, 2011, and the Mets will pay their sixth installment on Friday.

Read the rest here.