Dan Mullen, ESPN:

The calendar has turned to July 1, and that means one thing: It’s time for Mets fans everywhere to wish each other a Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! Why? On Tuesday, 62-year-old Bobby Bonilla will collect a check for $1,193,248.20 from the New York Mets, as he has and will every July 1 from 2011 through 2035.

David Suggs, Sporting News:

[Bonilla] returned to the Mets in 1999 but was released in 2000. New York still was on the hook for $5.9 million. Mets ownership, locked into doomed investment partnerships with Bernie Madoff, believed it more financially viable to defer payment for Bonilla’s contract, spreading it across 25 years (2011–2035) with eight percent interest.

Jenna West and Dan Shanoff, The Athletic:

[…] the Mets originally offered Bonilla the deferred payments of the $5.9 million they owed him because they thought they could exceed the deferral payments by investing that $5.9 million in Bernie Madoff’s fund, which, up until that point, had produced meaningful returns for then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Madoff’s fund, of course, turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

Suggs, again:

That initial $5.9 million fee now sits at $29.8 million.

Financial wizards.