Associated Press

Every year, Major League Soccer Players Union releases the salaries of all players under contract in M.L.S. Those figures are just out, and they’re worth a look. (Other people’s salaries always are.) Depending on how you feel about lockouts and LOOGYs who get $8 million for two years, they might make you feel a little bit better about pro sports in America. Yes, there have been some ugly leg-breaking tackles of late. But at least our soccer players aren’t a lot of spoiled rich guys, you know? By my quick count, only six players make more than the $1.2 million Bobby Bonilla will be getting from the Mets every year for the next 25 years (he retired from baseball in 2001, in case you’re wondering why you haven’t heard that name in a while). And if you pool the salaries of the two biggest names in M.L.S., David Beckham and Thierry Henry, you still won’t have enough to cover Eddy Curry’s $11 million-plus salary this past season.

What’s more, for those troubled by the fact that that C.E.O.’s tend to make more than 300 times the median pay of American workers (see Steven Greenhouse’s post on The Times’s Economix blog), M.L.S. offers a much more pleasing antidote: while its commissioner, Don Garber, can make up to $3 million in a year, that’s only 30 times as much as his workers’ median pay. And speaking personally, it’s nice to see that a publishing salary compares favorably with that of a lot of goalkeepers.

Still, if there are any fans of income inequality — capitalism revving as it should, punishing the indolent, inspiring the ambitious, rewarding the industrious — they have something to cheer about too. See Hector Jimenez, a midfielder making $32,604, or about 170 times less than his midfielder teammate Beckham. Left to be explained is why the latter’s salary is precisely $5,500,00.08 and Henry’s $5,000,000.04. Did their agents insist on the extra pennies?