FSOM: July 1 is known as Bobby Bonilla Day – why this retired MLB player is paid $1.2m-per-year despite retiring almost 25 YEARS AGO

July 1 has always been an auspicious day in the year.

It was the day on which Debbie Harry came into the world in 1945, and Carl Lewis 1961.

It was the day in which Marlon Brando left the world in 2004, and Yorkshire and England bowler – as well as all-round misery guts – Freddie Truman in 2006.

The local populace dance in the streets and wave their national flag on the independence days of Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia, while Canucks everywhere celebrate Canada Day.

More sobering, July 1, 1916 was also the first day of the Battle of the Somme in the Great War, a day in which the British forces suffered 58,000 casualties, with nearly 20,000 of those killed. Those numbers representing the size of small towns mark the worst single day disaster in British military history.

But among sports fans (and not only sports fans) in the USA, July 1 marks Bobby Bonilla Day.

Who he?

Bobby Bonilla was a baseball player who stands out as a shining example of the phrase: ‘nice work if you can get it.’

Bonilla is now 63-years-old and hasn’t swung a bit of lumber since October 2001 when he retired with the St Louis Cardinals.

But despite having not shoved a catching mitt on his hand for 25 years, every July 1, Bobby Bonilla is paid $1.19million (£879,000) by the New York Mets, and every year on that day his bank account will be swelled by that amount until 2035, He also gets another $500,000-a-year (£369,000-a-year) from the Baltimore Orioles for another two years.

Thus, July 1 is known as Bobby Bonilla Day, firstly among Mets fans who chortled at the way their hapless team has been taken for a Greyhound Bus type ride, but then among general sports fans at the way American sports contracts are put together.

In Major League Baseball (and NFL and NBA) there is no transfer system like football. A club wating a player does not pay a huge fee to another club for a player they want.

They go direct to the player (via his agent) to make their offer. This usually means buying out the player’s contract. Assuming he is a top player, his club would have stuck him on a fairy big wedge to get him in the first place. Those often eye-watering contracts become a bit of a financial chain around the neck and often the owning club is happy to get his wage packet off the books. Add in the fact that players in baseball are traded like Top Trumps cards and there is a ready-made market for top players to move. Furthermore, clubs rarely make any strenuous effort to keep a player who has been offered the keys to the kingdom elsewhere.

A club will sign a player on a huge contract over five years or more, knowing they will get two good years out of him before another team comes a-knocking who will pay up the remainder of his contract.

It’s why baseball players are the highest-paid of American sportsmen.

You might want to sit down when you read this. Japanese superstar Shohei Otani signed a 10-year deal with the LA Dodgers worth $700m (£514m), worth an annual salary of around $70m (£51m).

It surpasses the previous baseball contract of $250m (£185m) paid to Mike Trout by the neighbours down the Interstate 5 in Anaheim, the LA Angels and makes NFL superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ $450m (£333m) contract with the Kansas City Chiefs look like pocket money.

The Dodgers considers the spondulicks paid to Otani as money well spent. He is that rarity in baseball, a true all-rounder. He smashes the ball out of the park as a batter, and can step up on to the mound to pitch as a regular part of their starting rotation, so they are getting two players for the price of one.

He’s effectively won the Dodgers the last two World Series. But he is more than a huge playing asset. The sales of Otani shirts and merch in Japan goes a long way to covering a big chunk of his contract.

Otani doesn’t get all the $70m (£51m) up front, every year. The vast majority of it is deferred and he is paid just (JUST!!) $2m-a year for the first 10 years of his contract, with the remaining $680m (£503m) deferred until 2043. This helps the Dodgers’ cash flow and to manage such a stonking wedge of cash. It means Otani will have a nice nest egg to keep him in sake and pachinko games when he does bid ‘Sayonara’ to the game, and also protects the Dodgers investment as few if any clubs, have the wherewithal to poach Otani by buying out the remainder of his contract.

The Dodgers probably aren’t looking forward to 2043 when they have to find a way of ponying up $680m (£503m) but for the time being they can kick that particular can down the road.

Back to Bobby, though.

He was one of the game’s power hitters and his success with the Pittsburgh Pirates made him a hot ticket and he became the highest-paid player in the league when the Mets signed him in the 1991-92 close season.

But he struggled to fulfil expectations and he was traded to the LA Dodgers halfway through the 1998 season, but traded back to the Mets before the 1999 season.

When the Mets wanted to release him, they still owed him $5.9m (£4.4m) but instead of coughing this up immediately to get shot of him, his agent negotiated the settlement which makes July 1 Bobby Bonilla Day.

This was down to Mets owner Fred Wilpon who away from baseball, had climbed into bed with Bernie Madoff.

You might have heard of Madoff as the fraudster who concocted the largest-ever Ponzi scheme, swindling investors out of an estimated $65billion (£48bn) and for which he was put in chokey for 127 years (he died in jail, not surprisingly).

Bonilla’s agent offered the Mets a deal whereby the Bobster would defer payment for 10 years, and the Mets would pay him the $1.19m (£880,000) annually.

This would add up to a total payout of $29.8m (£22m), far more than the $5.9m (£4.4m) they owed him. But Wilpon calculated the eight per cent on Bonilla’s contract would be compensated by the 10 per cent he expected to receive on his investments with Madoff, money he never saw, along with the realisation that letting Bernie Madoff get involved with your finances is like asking Dr Harold Shipman to keep an eye on your nan.

Thus it is that Bobby Bonilla, a sportsman few would have heard of outside dedicated baseball fans, has come to have a day in his honour.

He’s not the only sportsman to have strange and bizarre clauses inserted into his contract.

When Mario Balotelli signed for Liverpool the club promised to pay the all-round loon an extra £1m if he avoided getting three red cards in a season.

When signing for Flamengo, Brazilian striker Ronaldo negotiated two nights out a week in his contract and it’s not just players.

Adidas has a clause in all of its product endorsement contracts with players which allows them to pull the plug if the player joins the Church of Scientology, although why they pick on Tom Cruise’s mob is a mystery.

Anyway. FSOM is off now to re-negotiate his contract with TIBS News.

What’s that? How much am I going to pay TIBS News to carry this stuff?

That pretty much guarantees there won’t be a FSOM Day.