Jul 4, 2020 4 min read

Hope you enjoyed July 1. Bobby Bonilla certainly did, just as he has every July 1 since 2011.

The former Pirates star gets a payment of $1.19 million from the Mets every July 1 from 2011 through 2035 in the worst deal ever agreed to by a professional sports team.

In 1999, at the age of 36, Bonilla signed a contract with the Mets to return to New York, where he had enjoyed some success after leaving the Pirates as a free agent.

But Bonilla batted .160 in 141 at-bats that season. The Mets released Bonilla. But they still owed him $5.9 million.

Bonilla’s agent, Dennis Gilbert, pulled off a heist of the century.

He convinced the cash-strapped Mets to agree to pay Bonilla $1.19 million per year for 25 years if he would defer the $5.9 million that he was owed.

But Mets owner Fred Wilpon had a fortune tied up with investor Bernie Madoff in a deal he thought was going to pay him a 10% return on his money. That, he felt, would offset the 8% interest the Mets would be paying Bonilla on his $5.9 million.

So, he foolishly agreed to the deal. And then Madoff’s Ponzi scheme fell through.

So, instead of paying Bonilla $5.9 million, the Mets will have shelled out $29.8 million to Bonilla by the time they’re done paying him in 2035.

Gilbert pulled off a deal that would make Madoff blush. And that bill comes due July 1 every year.

Talk about Christmas in July.

This is why fully guaranteed contracts are bad for sports. Players get paid regardless of performance.

In this case, the Mets are paying Bonilla nearly $30 million to not play baseball for them.

• That deal should scare any NFL teams – and the league in general – as it tries to figure out what they are going to do in terms of the league’s salary cap.

NFL revenues are going to be down in 2020, just like every other league. It’s going to be a matter of by how much, not if it is going to happen.

The NFL is considering allowing teams to borrow from future expected revenues to keep the salary cap from dropping by as much as $30 million – by some estimates – for the 2021 season, if there are no fans in the stadiums.

Nobody wants that, including the NFLPA.

But they have to be careful that long-term growth projections aren’t impacted by COVID-19 and its fallout in future seasons.

At this point, nobody knows how long it will take some businesses, including major advertisers, to recover from the nationwide shutdown.

The real key could be the wording in the new CBA that was approved earlier this year that calls for the NFL to share any potential gambling revenue with players.

That was written into the new CBA despite the fact that nobody knows exactly how much money the league might earn from gambling ventures. The current situation could force the NFL to dive into that pool sooner rather than later.

• A 60-game baseball season should be very interesting. Essentially, every team in the league will have rolled into July tied for first place. And it becomes a 60-game sprint to the end.

It should change the way managers control games. For example, the Sunday lineup – one littered with reserves – will likely be out the window. Every game is just too important.

And early in the process, five-inning starts from pitchers will likely be the norm.

For teams such as the Pirates, who lack a true ace, it’s an equalizer. The 60-game season levels the playing field across the board. Get hot for a couple of weeks and you’ve got a chance. Lose a star player for a week or two and it really hurts.

• It was no surprise the NFL trimmed its preseason down to two games and canceled the Hall of Fame game. Teams are going to need the additional time on the practice field to work on installing all the things they didn’t get done in the spring.

Even at that, teams counting on rookies to make big contributions this season are going to be asking quite a bit from players who will be trying to play football at the NFL level after about 20 practices and two preseason games.

That’s an awful lot to ask.