The Cardinals will be paying Matt Holliday until 2029

When the first reports of Matt Holliday’s deal came out they said that the contract was not backloaded. I suppose that’s technically accurate in that he’ll receive the same amount of money for all seven years of the active part of the deal, but that doesn’t exactly tell the whole story:

The St. Louis Cardinals will be paying Matt Holliday through 2029 under the $120 million, seven-year contract that is likely to be finalized Thursday. Holliday will get $17 million a season in salary, but $2 million a year will be deferred without interest, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

I guess that’s less than 20 years from now, but when you say “2029" it seems like an impossibly long time into the future. Like, I get this image of his last check being delivered to him via flying car to his home on a colony on the moon or something.

Not that this is the most notable deferred money deal of all time. Back in 2000, Bobby Bonilla struck a deal with the Mets in which the team purchased an annuity rather than pay him the remaining $5.9 million of deferred money that he was owed from his 1992 contract. Every July 1st, starting in 2011 and lasting until 2035, Bonilla will receive $1.19 million. Bonilla is going to be 72 on the day he receives his last payment.