The New York Mets have been infamously cutting a check to Bobby Bonilla every year long after he last played for the team and will continue to do so for some time. It appears Mets owner Steve Cohen has a sense of humor about the Bonilla-related mess he inherited.
Mocking and ridiculing the embarrassing fallout from the absurdly constructed contract buyout has become annual tradition in the MLB world when July 1 rolls around every summer. To no surprise, Cohen was compelled to address the annual Bonilla payday shortly after taking over the organization.
Bonilla of course receives a check in the amount of $1.19 million every year from the Mets as part of bizarre buyout arrangement between the parties agreed upon in 2000 that will continue until 2035.
Asked by a fan Thursday on social media whether he’d ever consider cutting a lump-sum check in the amount of $18 million to rid the Mets of having to confront the Bonilla conundrum every summer, Cohen delivered a brilliant response.
Most baseball insiders agree that Cohen has done a brilliant job ingratiating himself to the Mets’ passionate but dejected fan base. While the easygoing and upfront manner in which he has engaged fans on Twitter has helped that along, his whimsical, outside-the-box idea on how to deal with the Bonilla nightmare is a masterful stroke of PR.
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