It's no secret that baseball player salaries have exploded over the last two decades, but just how much? With some help from the USA Today Salary Database, let's look at the game's highest paid players from last season, ten seasons ago, and twenty seasons ago…

2010

Four Yankees occupy the top spots, and six New York players are in the top seven. Ichiro Suzuki, Barry Zito, Torii Hunter, and Manny Ramirez were the only other players to pull down more than $18MM last season.

2000

Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Raul Mondesi, and Jeter make up the rest of the eight-figure club.

1990

Tim Raines wasn't far off the list at $2.055MM, and at least six other players earned no less than $2MM that season.

The top ten salaries in the game have nearly doubled over the last ten years, and they've increased ten-fold over the last 20 years. Albert Pujols could very well land the first contract with a $30MM average annual value next winter; how long will it be before we see a $40MM a year player, maybe ten years? Based on the recent inflation, it could be sooner.