There are a whole bunch of things that are interesting about "The Beckham Experiment," the new Grant Wahl book which has a chance to be an actual indispensable read about soccer in the U.S.
There's the marketing-of-Beckham stuff, the way everyone tried to milk the Beckham cash cow, the way AEG fouled up (the focus of my Thursday column), and the whole Beckham-Landon Donovan feud (which has generated most of the early headlines).
There's also the insight into just how low-budget Major League Soccer is compared to other American professional sports.
Some of this drew attention when Beckham first signed, because his salary was so out of whack with the rest of the players in MLS, even if it wasn't anywhere near the $250 million that Beckham's people made it seem to be. (As was subsequently clarified if largely forgotten, that was a best-case scenario for his total soccer and non-soccer income.)
But "The Beckham Experiment" certainly humanizes the disparity between Beckham's income and that of his teammates, not with its lists of the Galaxy salaries for his first two seasons, but by pointing out what it's like to try to live on $30,000 a year or less as a professional athlete in Los Angeles, and by constantly pointing out how Beckham's teammates doubt he can relate to what their life is like (or effectively express their interests and needs as a team captain). There's also the gulf between Beckham and his teammates that's created when he flies first-class and his teammates fly coach on some road trips.
This is all because of MLS's relentless focus on the bottom line. It may be a necessity, given the league's niche status and the long shadow of the failure of the North American Soccer League, but the $2.1-million salary cap (that's per-team, per-season; Beckham's cap-busting $6.5 million salary is exempt under an exception known as the Beckham rule) clearly hamstrings the quality of play. If the cap wasn't enough to make the idea of bringing a Beckham, or other high-profile international stars, into the MLS a mistake bordering on folly, the cost-cutting elsewhere (bad hotels, cheap team meals, commercial flights) would probably be enough to discourage any other international stars from making the job.
Wahl never explicitly tackles the concept, but his book certainly suggests that The Beckham Experiment was, for MLS as a whole, the wrong idea at the wrong time -- which hasn't kept the entire league from trying to cash in for however long the fading concept of Beckhamania lasts.