Thursday was orientation at the University of South Florida, a sea of rising freshmen and their families, and somehow no one noticed the guy who’s the 16th-highest-paid player on the New York Mets’ 2025 payroll.

Even a few days before “Bobby Bonilla Day,” Bobby Bonilla was just another dad bobbing, bleary-eyed, from one session to the next.

“What room we got to be in?” Bonilla asked Christina Solomon, his longtime partner whom he calls his wife.

“Group Gold, so …” Christina said, studying the schedule.

Bonilla is 62, which means several things. One is that, compared to when he was a six-time all-star and a World Series champion, his batteries don’t hold the same charge. In a few weeks, his youngest son, Roman, will enroll at USF, making Bonilla and Christina empty-nesters. Bonilla is still hulking, 6-foot-3 and a Tommy Bahama XXXL, with a movie star smile.

But now, maybe more than in his prime, he has become an icon of nostalgia and the subject of mythology that few from his generation can claim. Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Derek Jeter may have been more accomplished, but none has his own unofficial holiday.

Bonilla hasn’t stepped into a major league batter’s box since 2001, yet every July 1 through 2035, the Mets will pay him $1,193,248.20. He provides no service for the organization, neither consulting, scouting nor coaching. Until recently, Bonilla didn’t even speak with anyone from the Mets, let alone set foot on team property. If anything, for Mets fans, Bobby Bonilla Day has become an occasion not for celebration but for solemn revulsion, a moment to look on Bonilla’s quarter-century-old contract as a recurring totem of the team’s tradition of haplessness.

“Every Bobby Bonilla Day,” comedian and lifelong Mets fan Jimmy Kimmel wrote in an email to The Washington Post, “my family and I barbecue 1.19 million dollars cash.”

The punch line being that that’s what the Mets did shortly after releasing Bonilla in 1999. Instead of buying out his contract for a $5.9 million lump sum, as was and still is the norm, the team agreed to a deal that would wind up paying him five times as much.

So every July, year after year, the direct deposit hits. A fan base grumbles. A fascination grows. The payments will continue for another decade, meaning that when Bonilla is 72, he will, financially speaking, still be on the Mets’ roster.

On this Thursday at USF, Bonilla shrugs when asked about the so-called holiday. He and Christina throw no party. They go on no shopping spree. Maybe this year, he says, they will go to dinner with friends, less a celebration of the Mets’ ongoing misery than of two parents getting their fourth child into college.

“And they’re always like: ‘You treating today?’” Christina says of their friends.

Bonilla laughs, the sound echoing through the student union.

“There’s no way somebody’s buying me something on that day,” he says, pretending to push a dinner check across the table. “That s—’ll come like: ‘Here you go, big fella.’”

Still, that’s not his favorite part. There’s the joy of seeing a seven-figure payment landing in your bank account, of course, but Bonilla delights in the texts he gets from an army of ex-teammates, many jealous of Bonilla’s astonishing foresight.

“In their eyes, it was the greatest contract ever,” he says, “They’re all like: ‘What made you even think of that?’”

Two thousand miles west, the man who did think of that takes his seat in the first row of Dodger Stadium, immediately behind home plate. Dennis Gilbert, 78, has sat here for years, appearing in television broadcasts so frequently that, in 2010, Fox jokingly gave him an Emmy.

Gilbert sells life insurance, which doesn’t exactly sound exciting. At least at first, neither does the product he wants to tell you about. But nothing gets his goose squawking louder than a merry chat about non-qualified deferred compensation.

“An individual policy,” Gilbert is saying as Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani digs in for his first at-bat, “and it grows tax-free!”

This will continue for several minutes.

But here’s the gist: In late 2023, Ohtani rocked the professional sports market when he agreed to a 10-year contract with the Dodgers for a staggering $700 million — all fully guaranteed. It was the richest deal ever, until the Mets signed Juan Soto last year to a $765 million contract. But to Gilbert, the thing that makes Ohtani’s agreement interesting is that it’s structured like an insurance policy. Of the $70 million the team owes Ohtani each year, $68 million is to be deferred, paid out as a lump sum when the deal expires.

The Dodgers, therefore, can use the savings, such as they are, to surround Ohtani with other stars and chase a repeat of last year’s World Series championship. Last offseason, the team committed $400 million to free agents. The deal isn’t bad for Ohtani, either, considering he will pay no federal income tax on that $680 million until the scheduled payout in 2033. Because of a loophole in California tax law, which lawmakers are desperately trying to close, he may never pay state tax.

“It’s not what you got. It’s what you keep,” Gilbert continues. “It’s all about that. That’s the insurance thing: taking money out of the bank of today and putting it into the bank of tomorrow.”

Gilbert insists his product is even better than the deferred-money deals inked by Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.

That’s because Gilbert requires the underwriter to pay interest on the eventual lump sum. He estimates having sold 30 or 40 such policies over the years — to Hollywood actors, pop stars and pro athletes. His commissions paid for these plum seats, the electric Porsche he drove here in, the palatial Beverly Hills estate with the Emmy, a fence dividing his property from that of the Playboy Mansion and so much baseball memorabilia that the house feels like Cooperstown West.

No, it doesn’t sound exciting. So years ago, Gilbert gave his marquee product a snappier name.

He calls it the Bobby Bonilla Plan.

When Bonilla was a kid, he watched his father, an electrician, get knocked off a ladder after touching a live wire. Roberto Sr. calmly climbed back up, finished the job and looked down at his son.

“Is this what you want to do for a living?” he asked.

That was the moment, Bonilla says now, that he decided a life in the trades wasn’t for him. He grew into the body of a tight end, with the silky movements of an NBA player, the fierce uppercut of a PGA Tour star. He played several sports, but his heart belonged to baseball.

He and Bonds became the Pittsburgh Pirates’ young anchors, and in 1990, Bonilla signed a one-year contract extension that made him a millionaire. A windfall, to be sure, but alongside came a problem: a massive tax bill. Bonilla was explaining this to R.J. Reynolds, a Pirates teammate, who recommended Bonilla have a conversation with Reynolds’s soft-spoken agent, Dennis Gilbert.

Years earlier, the insurance man had expanded his business with an accounting degree, and Gilbert let Bonilla know about an arcane provision in the tax code: Someone with an unusual pay fluctuation — a big contract extension, say — could submit a three-year average of his income (the IRS has since eliminated this). Bonilla followed Gilbert’s advice, received a refund and wanted to learn more ways to hold on to his cash.

As it did for Bonilla, baseball had lifted Gilbert beyond the working class. After a heart attack, Gilbert’s father lost his job and made ends meet by peddling stuff at swap meets, and young Dennis was a speedy outfielder whom everyone called “Go Go.” He got drafted by the Boston Red Sox and toiled in the minors for a few years, and when a Mexican League team denied him a bonus he had earned, he retired from the game, went back to school and started hustling.

He took a job selling life insurance, learning that camping out at the Los Angeles County Hall of Records, where future-minded newlyweds continually emerged, was his own portal to the bank of tomorrow. He showed up at hospitals and courthouses to sell his policies, and eventually entertainment stars such as Sally Field and Michael Jackson were among his clients. By the time Gilbert was 35, he was driving a Rolls-Royce with a license plate stamped with “GO GO 19,” his old jersey number.

Gilbert became an agent in 1980, again expanding his skills portfolio, and a decade later he negotiated a $23.5 million contract extension for Jose Canseco. Gilbert set up a $2-a-minute phone line so fans could listen to Canseco describe his adventures off the field, made connections to film and television producers for Canseco and Danny Tartabull and combed through the fine print on a real estate deal for Curt Schilling.

Bonilla joined Gilbert’s stable and, in 1991, led the National League in doubles, made his fourth consecutive all-star team and helped lift the Pirates within one win of the World Series. That offseason, the Mets won a bidding war, signing Bonilla to a five-year, $29 million deal. He bought a new car and a $2 million home, a price he never shared with his father.

“He’d have looked at me like I was f—ing crazy,” Bonilla says. “‘Put that money in the bank, boy!’”

Then again, Roberto Sr. didn’t mind some of the spoils. The view from his seats behind home plate was close enough for the son to wink at his dad before at-bats. Bobby says now those winks were a reminder — of how high he had climbed, sure, but also of how easy it is for a guy to get knocked from the ladder.

Even with professional baseball salaries exploding in the 1990s, some players were going broke. Tony Gwynn, one of the best hitters ever, defaulted on loans before declaring bankruptcy. Jack Clark, a four-time all-star, accumulated a collection of luxury cars and, eventually, millions in debt. Pete Rose, the game’s hit king, went to federal prison for tax evasion.

Amid an epidemic of overspending combined with poor financial literacy, Bonilla saw once-wealthy teammates lose everything.

He remembers asking Gilbert, “Dennis, how do I keep this?”

So, Go Go did what he does. In 1993, with rumors intensifying about players potentially going on strike, Gilbert restructured Bonilla’s portfolio to resemble that of another Mets player, Bret Saberhagen. The pitcher’s deal deferred $4.5 million into an annuity that, beginning in 2004, would distribute $250,000 every year until 2029.

Bonilla says now that Gilbert redirected $5.7 million into a similar policy, and when the Mets traded Bonilla to Baltimore in 1995, the Orioles had to assume responsibility for $500,000-a-year payments that would start in 2004. He signed with the Marlins after the 1996 season, got traded to the Dodgers in 1998 and was dealt back to the Mets a few months after that.

He reportedly clashed with Manager Bobby Valentine, who didn’t reply to interview requests for this story, and made headlines during the 1999 NL Championship Series for playing poker with Rickey Henderson in the clubhouse while Game 6 was still being played. Bonilla says now that Henderson was angry at Valentine for being replaced in the game and wanted to calm down by playing cards. The controversy, Bonilla says, was overblown.

“It’s New York,” Bonilla says. “You can just sneeze wrong sometimes.”

Regardless, it was the impetus for the Mets parting ways with Bonilla, who had underperformed in 1999. The team was still on the hook for nearly $6 million for the 2000 season, so Gilbert came up with a creative addendum to the player’s contract. He keeps a copy of the document alongside baseballs signed by Babe Ruth and Willie Mays and game-worn Henderson, Bonds and Schilling jerseys.

“The Club,” the clause began, “shall establish on its books an intracompany account to be known as the Bonilla Deferred Compensation Reserve Account.”

It allowed the Mets to invest the deferred amount however they wished, not unlike the Dodgers’ deal with Ohtani, but this would later be seen as a fateful link in a bizarre series of events. The addendum’s final page is an amortization schedule, which factored in an 8 percent interest rate, with annual payments beginning July 1, 2011.

Eager to move on, the team said yes. So did Bonilla.

“I wasn’t worried about purchasing stuff,” he says. “I was scared that I would be given all this money and then I would lose it. And then what would my story be?”

Even after this year’s payout, the Mets still owe Bonilla $7.45 million — more than they owed him after the 1999 season. So many years later, the deal would seem to have aged terribly.

Then again, is it possible today’s Mets may win their first championship in a generation because of Bobby Bonilla?

Among the team’s reasons for approving the 1999 addendum was that, compared to the return on co-owner Fred Wilpon’s investments, 8 percent interest was peanuts. Wilpon, a New York real estate tycoon, and his finance guy had worked together for decades, and with yearly reports showing about 15 percent growth on a $550 million portfolio, the decision to pay Bonilla to go away was easy.

And with an extra $5.9 million to play with, the Mets traded for ace pitcher Mike Hampton, effectively cutting his $12 million annual salary in half. Hampton won 15 games in 2000, and the Mets reached the World Series for the first time since 1986. As a bonus, Hampton signed with the Colorado Rockies after the season, giving New York a compensatory draft pick it used to select seven-time all-star David Wright.

“Look what I did for you guys,” Hampton would joke to the Mets much later.

Then, in 2008, Wilpon got a call. His investment guy, Bernard L. Madoff, had been arrested for running a $65 billion securities fraud and would later plead guilty to running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Wilpon’s $500 million? Gone. The Mets had to take an emergency $25 million loan from Major League Baseball just to stay afloat, and with the team slashing payroll and unable to compete in free agency, it made the playoffs twice in a dozen years.

The drip-drip of the Bonilla payments underscored how poorly the team was being managed, amping up the pressure and the jokes every July.

In 2020, the Mets reported a $268 million loss, and Wilpon sold the team to hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen for a then-MLB record $2.4 billion. With deep pockets and big aspirations, Cohen, a lifelong Mets fan, predicted a championship in three to five years.

That hasn’t happened but not because the team is being chintzy. This year’s team has 12 players making at least $10 million, and in December the Mets added Soto for a staggering deal that, with incentives, could be worth $805 million. It included a $75 million signing bonus and a clause that allows Soto to opt out after five years.

The only thing missing? Nary a dollar was deferred.

On this Thursday at orientation, young Roman emerges from a ballroom and sees his dad, dressed in the official uniform of fatherhood: blue polo, navy shorts, running shoes.

“He’s just an old dude,” Roman says with a smile.

“An old dude!” Bonilla replies. “I’m going to remember that.”

His four kids needle him relentlessly, though not just because this year he became eligible to receive his full MLB pension. A few months ago, the kids ordered Uber Eats, and Bonilla went berserk. A service fee? Delivery charge? Tip?

“With my upbringing,” Bonilla says, “all I can hear is my father.”

A man with keen financial foresight is just a cheapskate rebranded, and until recently Bonilla was content to putter across town to the Concession, a private golf club not far from his home in Sarasota, in a 23-year-old Buick Century. Even after the sale of the beloved Buick, it’s not a Maserati or a Tesla he drives. It’s a Ford F-150.

In the years since Bonilla signed his landmark contract, more players have encountered financial hardship, including some of Gilbert’s ex-clients. He stepped away from representing players in 1998, shifting his focus back to insurance full time, but the cautionary tales still find him. Tartabull, who Gilbert says rejected a deferred-money contract in 1992, nearly identical to the one Bonilla signed that same year, was arrested in 2017 after refusing to pay more than $276,000 in child support. Schilling said years ago he was “tapped out” after a failed $50 million investment in a video game company. Canseco autographs items mailed to him for $15 each, and when The Post requested an interview for this story through Canseco’s representative, the individual asked for an “honorarium” and did not reply to an email stating that The Post does not compensate sources for interviews.

“Sometimes people listened to me, sometimes they didn’t,” Gilbert says. “They wanted to get paid now. But I preached it as much as I could.”

A few days before Bobby Bonilla Day, its namesake is in the mood to splurge. Roman has another session, but Bonilla and Christina are in the clear.

So they head downstairs, cross a plaza and walk toward the school’s apparel store. It’s a smorgasbord of USF-branded swag: corkscrews, hoodies, even pickleball paddles. Surrounded by such green and gold abundance, all on a markup that would make the late Roberto Sr.’s eyes bulge, Bonilla examines a golf club head cover stitched in green-and-gold leather.

He admires a zip-up windbreaker and shirts with varying degrees of ostentation. Then he tries on a faded baseball cap with “USF Dad” embroidered on it.

“This is all I need right here,” he says.

He drifts toward the checkout line, where he can smell coffee from the adjoining shop. A good time for a pick-me-up, and Bonilla plops his new hat on the counter. While the clerk rings it up, Bonilla digs through a tote bag that families were given when they checked in, and after a few minutes of searching, he brandishes a printout with a QR code on it, good for 20 percent off.