Just When I Thought You Couldn't Get Any Dumber, You Go and Do Something Like This . . .

I am a Mets fan.

Note the present tense; yes, I'm still a fan despite the disemboweling Mets Township took this year at the hands of this once-proud franchise. Well, at least once-feisty. Now there are just thousand-yard-stares abound in both the organization and its fan base. By late August we all became a bunch of R. P. McMurphys, lumbering along, hoping and praying someone would appear to Big Chief the Mets, the 2009 season, and our rapidly diminishing attention to baseball.

Terrible. But, as I've been forced to point out for waaaaay too long, these times are the proving grounds for people to earn their stripes as fans. Dues-paying time, and a fine opportunity to shed worthless bandwagoners who've by now ordered, received, and donned their 2009 World Champions Yankees caps and their "27" T-shirts. We won't be leaving the back porch light on for you folks, so let's go ahead and have your mail forwarded to the Bronx. Good riddance.

I'm still a fan. The baseball blog we began in earnest in 2003 -- and will be giving a Viking funeral in a couple of weeks -- didn't illustrate that fact very well this season, but I think my contribution to the 1,637 posts over the years at Misery Loves Company speak to it. I've poured and will continue to pour a good deal of time, money, effort, interest, and emotion into the New York Mets. For better or for worse.

But you know what? I'm not such an avid Mets fan that this amusing little nugget didn't slip through my radar. (Amusing like a 2x4 to the eye socket.)

Looking ahead a year or so, here's what the the Mets' 2011 payroll currently looks like:

New York Mets 2011 Payroll
Luis Castillo: $6,250,000
David Wright: $14,250,000
Jose B. Reyes: club option @ $11,000,000 or $500,000 buyout
Carlos Beltran: $18,500,000
Johan Santana: $22,500,000
Oliver Perez: $12,000,000
Francisco Rodriguez: $11,167,000
Bobby Parnell: $400,000
Omir Santos: $400,000
Alex Cora: a vesting option
Daniel Murphy: $400,000
Bobby Bonilla: $1,193,248.20

Yeah.

That's right.

The Mets will pay Bobby Bo $1.19M in 2011. And 2012. And 2013. And 2014. And 2015. And it goes on until 2035.

What I'd either forgotten or never knew was that rather than pay this worthless, two-time loser $5.9 million to go away in 2000, the Mets agreed to pay him $1.19M every year from 2011 to 2035. That's a total of $29,831,205. Seems stupid, right?

Here's where it gets doubly delicious. Yes, the Mets seem to be rewarding Bonilla for being an enormous prick. (Not having one, however, as the NY rumor mill will tell you.) Giving him close to 30 mill instead of 6. And by dispensing it like allowance, it keeps him from being the moron that he is and blowing it all in one fell trip to A.C. -- all highly annoying.

But . . . taking into account the interest over 10-35 years, and dollars in 2000 versus dollars in 2035, it's actually a much better deal for the Mets. Here's how fellow Mets blogger (I still have my membership card, dammit) Eli from Brooklyn explained it when people thought it was a misprint:

It is actually correct, and a horrible deal... for Bonilla. Ahh, the power of compounded interest. The way it works, the Mets set aside $6 million in 2000 @ a rate of 12% per year. They are not allowed to withdraw any funds until year 11, in which they can withdraw $1,200,000 per year for 25 years. After the 25 years, and after paying off Bonilla, the Mets will have... drum roll please... $138 million. So they took the $6 million he was supposed to receive and invested it themselves and made $132 million for themselves on it. They also have a similar deal with Bret Saberhagen.

Wow. I'm stunned -- the Mets were actually shrewd with their money and didn't find themselves on the ass end of a big-money deal. Bonilla gets his money, and more of it, but the Mets make a lot of cash off sending him to the scrap heap. (As it turned out, the "scrap heap" was Atlanta, which makes sense to me.)

But . . . wait . . . there's more.

Now here comes the problem with this deal and others. Bernie Madoff is the one that was guaranteeing them the 12%. So the Mets are now going to be paying the players out of their pockets, with new 2011 dollars, not 2000 compounded dollars, and on top of that, never receiving the $138 million lump sum. Much of the speculated $700 million the Mets lost was not what they lost out of pocket, but what was supposed to be there after this great compounded rate.

Honestly. This organization can't win for losing, and it feels like we take just as many lumps. They get hoodwinked by this scheming pettifogger for hundreds of millions of dollars, and the end result is that the team we watch will be worse for it and . . . AND . . . Bobby Bonilla's grimace-inducing name will not come off the books of The New York Metropolitans Baseball Team until I am 65 years old. It's just . . . [labored groan].

Apparently this story made its way around the Township in August / September this year, but of course I wasn't privy to it, what with my inadvertent, self-imposed Mets blackout. So most fans got this punt in the groin amid the flurry of bad news that kept coming during the season. I, of course, get it now . . . when I had just put the ugliness of '09 to bed and commenced the delusional high hopes for the future.

I'm still a fan. Serenity now, I'm still a fan. Serenity now, I'm still a fan . . .

Oh, and Steve Phillips, you douchebuckle, I hope you get what's coming to you.