New York Mets fans are very familiar with July 1 annually. If you're not, it's called "Bobby Bonilla Day" around these parts.
In 1999, a struggling Bonilla in his second tenure with the Mets, was released by the team, but was still owed $5.9 million.
Bonilla's agent, Dennis Gilbert, proposed a deal to the team: payment would be deferred for a decade, after which annual payouts of $1.19 would be made from 2011-35.
According to Gilbert, Bonilla and he were always talking about "taking money out of the bank today and putting it into the bank of tomorrow," and that they began talking about deferred money during his first stint with the Mets.
“My background is, I’ve been in the insurance business since 1972," Gilbert told Inside the Mets last week. "I really believe that deferring money, getting interest, and working it into insurance products, and that’s what we did due to the tax free growth. The Mets guaranteed eight percent, so that’s what we did.”
Then-owner, Fred Wilpon, accepted the deal, due to his investments with Bernie Madoff, which came to light in 2008 during the stock market collapse.
Wilpon felt comfortable doing the deal at the time. He believed he would receive 10 percent returns on his investments with Madoff that would outweigh the eight percent interest the Mets would be paying on the initial $5.9 still owed to Bonilla.
Obviously, the contract wound up being the butt of many jokes about the Mets shortcomings under the Wilpon regime, but when Steve Cohen bought the club in 2020, he made light of it.
By doing so, it seems the view on the situation has shifted a bit in the lighthearted direction as opposed to purely anger.
Contract deferrals aren't uncommon. In fact, Michael Mayer of MetsMerized creates a Twitter thread every July 1 to document what players and teams have deferred contracts on the books.
While it may not have been the first deferred contract of all time, it's become of the most notable, as it dealt with a substantial amount of money.
"When something like that happens, it gets peoples attention," Gilbert said about it becoming a cultural phenomenon.
Even still, Bonilla had his well-known deferral agreement, go to auction last week.
It sold for a whopping $180 thousand.
The piece of paper is just one of several things included with the winning bid. It also includes:
-A 30-minute Zoom call with Bonilla and Gilbert.
-A signed baseball.
-A game-used bat from Bonilla's personal collection
-A day with Bonilla in New York that includes breakfast, watching batting practice at Citi Field, a game, and dinner.
-An exclusive NFT of the contract.
So, how did this all come to be?
Joshua Kusnick, CEO of Simple NFT, spearheaded the project.
After working at a prior NFT company with former Mets assistant general manager, Adam Guttridge, Kusnick began his own endeavor and first approached scouting service Perfect Game USA about starting an NFT program for them.
There, he met Rick Thurman, former collaborator of Gilbert, and the rest was history.
Kusnick flew out to California, and was enamored by Gilbert's memorabilia collection, that included artifacts from the 1927 New York Yankees season, a ball signed by Harry Houdini, and the famous letter between former MLB commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti and Pete Rose to voluntarily withdraw from baseball after his betting scandal.
After Gilbert showed Kusnick the Bonilla contract and deferral agreement, Kusnick went to Goldin Auctions to package the fan experience and an exclusive NFT in with the physical contract.
“The reason I think it worked out is because in this world for tech and NFTs, I’m pretty much the only person alive with the crossover of 20 years in the sports memorabilia hobby, so I’m an expert there. I was a sports agent for 20 years, so I’m an expert there, and now I’m a CEO of an NFT company, so I’m kind of an expert there," Kusnick told Inside the Mets. "That kind of crossover does not exist in the NFT world.”
If everything included in the package sold separately, Kusnick said, it would not have totaled $180 thousand, but together, it became more than just a piece of paper.
“The thing I’m most proud of is Candy Brands with Gary Vee, they spend a billion dollars-ish for rights with MLB to make NFTs for them," Kusnick said. "The most expensive one they have sold so far is $100 thousand. They’ll beat that one day, but we just shattered that with the help of Bobby Bonilla, Dennis Gilbert and Rick Thurman.”
For Kusnick, he's just getting started, and we may see many more auctions like this going forward that are the perfect storm between historical artifacts, present day fan experiences and the future, which include digital aspects like NFTs.
"Candy Brands provide entertainment in sports and that's important and valuable in this world," Kusnick said. However, he believes his brand, Simple, will revolutionize the sports world.
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