David Beckham's incredible shrinking paycheck

At first the word was he was going to make a quarter of a billion dollars over five years. Then Grant Wahl reported in January that David Beckham's L.A. Galaxy pay will be more like $50 million over five years. Now the AP tells us his base salary is actually $5.5 million a year.

At this rate, we should expect to learn soon that Becks is actually paying Phil Anschutz for the privilege of getting to live in Southern California and jump start his wife's movie career while staying in shape. Actually, no: The main reason for the discrepancy in reported paychecks is that Beckham is getting paid, Hollywood-style, as a percentage of ticket and merchandise sales. But I don't know that letting the ever-less-impressive details of the contract trickle out like this is such a smart idea for Major League Soccer. At first the league looked ridiculously profligate. Now it's starting to look cheap.

Update: For those too lazy to read the comments, an astute reader in Philadelphia had this to say:

I don't know why MLS put out the first figure (perhaps as a sop to Becks' agent), but I know why they've put out the second, lower one. As they've seen their attempts to sign other international stars fail left and right, they saw the need to reset expectations of those players who saw the crazy huge numbers and wanted the same.