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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 98050.html

One year from today, the Mets will add to their payroll a 47-year-old, past-his-prime power hitter who has a reputation as a malcontent—a player who has been retired from professional baseball for nine years and won't play another game again.

Nevertheless, starting on July 1, 2011, Bobby Bonilla will remain on the franchise's payroll for 25 years, collecting an annual salary of $1,193,248.20. Those are the terms the Mets agreed to Jan. 3, 2000, when they bought out the final year of Mr. Bonilla's contract.

"That beautiful thing," he said here Monday

And baseball teams wonder why they're going broke.

It's deferred payments like this that have kept the D-Backs from being competitive since they won the series in 2001.

Prior to the 2001 season, Jerry Colangelo negotiated $244 million in deferred compensation for:

Randy Johnson
Curt Schilling
Jay Bell
Steve Finley
Matt Williams
Todd Stottlemyre
Tony Womack
Luis Gonzalez
Armando Reynoso
Roberto Alomar

Some of those folks are STILL on the books.

And we're still paying Bernard Fricking Gilkey until 2017 for the 161 games he played between 1998 and 2000.