Lou Boudreau
In 1942, the Cleveland Indians chose their slow-footed, hard-hitting, slick-fielding 24-year-old shortstop Lou Boudreau to become player-manager of the ballclub. In his seventh season at the helm, he led the Indians to a World Series title. Perhaps the best shortstop of the 1940s and a great defensive player and batting champion, in that glorious season he also led by example, hitting .355 with 106 runs batted in. He did not have such a season again, but then again, not many people do.
Eight years prior in 1936, Boudreau entered the University of Illinois, where he majored in physical education and captained both the basketball and baseball teams. Boudreau led Illinois to the Big Ten basketball title in 1937, and was a 1938 All-American. Basketball took a huge toll on his ankles, eventually leading to arthritis. Lou had to tape them before every game of his baseball career. The ankles also earned him a 4-F classification during World War II.
As a college baseball player he averaged about .270 and .285. But all that practice with his dad fielding ground balls showed as he fielded his third base position excellently. The Cubs and Indians both pursued Boudreau and he also fielded offers to act in a movie and to play for $150 a game with Caesar’s All-Americans, a Hammond, Indiana, team in the National Basketball League, a forerunner of the NBA,. But Boudreau felt he owed his loyalty to Cleveland’s Cy Slapnicka, who had done his best to help him maintain his amateur status at Illinois.
The Indians assigned Boudreau in 1938 to a Class C club in the Western Association: he sat on the bench for a week and then was shipped to Cedar Rapids in the Class B Three-I League. After hitting .290 in 60 games, the third baseman was called up to the Indians. He sat on the bench observing Hal Trosky, Ken Keltner, Jeff Heath, Earl Averill, and a young pitcher named Bob Feller. Boudreau played first base and went to bat twice, grounding out and walking.
In 1939, Lou trained with the Indians in New Orleans. Manager Oscar Vitt advised Boudreau to move to the shortstop position, because young Ken Keltner looked to have a lock on third base. Ex-big leaguer Greg Mulleavy, the regular shortstop at Buffalo, was kind enough to take Boudreau under his wing and teach him the job. Lou batted .331 with 17 homers and 57 RBIs in 117 games , earning an August 7,recall to the parent club. Boudreau played 53 games at shortstop for the Indians in 1939, batting .258 with 19 runs batted in. Lou was now in the big leagues for good, but unfortunately lost his father that year. Lou Sr. never got to see his son play in the majors.
In 1941, Lou was back at shortstop under popular manager Roger Peckinpaugh. Despite the switch, neither the Indians nor Boudreau fared as well as in 1940. Lou’s average fell to .257 with 10 homers and 56 runs batted in, though he led the league with 45 doubles.
After just a single season, Peckinpaugh was promoted to general manager and while a search was underway for a new manager, Lou sent a letter requesting an interview. On November 24, Lou presented his case. Initially, the vote was 11-1 against him, but George Martin, president of Sherwin Williams Paint Company, felt that a young man would be more desirable at this point than the tried and true. The directors finally agreed on Boudreau, backing him up with a staff of older and more experienced coaches: Burt Shotton, Oscar Melillo and George Susce.
Bradley introduced Lou to the press as the new manager, and one wag wrote, “Great! The Indians get a Baby Snooks for a manager and ruin the best shortstop in baseball.” The general feeling around the city was that Boudreau would not be able to handle both being a ballplayer and a manager, but the press was generally kind.
Soon after Boudreau’s hiring, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Two days later Bob Feller joined the Navy, and Boudreau, like his counterparts on the other teams, spent the next four years not knowing who their players were going to be.
Not all of the Indians were happy with the new manager. During his first spring training, Boudreau had three players walk into his office (Ben Chapman, Gee Walker and Hal Trosky) to tell him they had asked for the job and could do a better job than he would. During some conferences on the mound, veteran pitchers would give Boudreau a variation of “Listen, college boy, you play shortstop and I’ll do the pitching.” Especially troublesome was Jim Bagby Jr., who Boudreau considered “the nastiest pitcher [I] ever played behind.” When Boudreau would boot a ball, he would hear razzing about going back to college to learn how to play shortstop.
Without Feller, the 1942 Indians went 75-79, 28 games behind the Yankees. Playing in 147 games, Boudreau batted .283, batting in 58 runs. Boudreau felt that the hardest part of his new job was having the sense of when to take a pitcher out. Though he was still learning, he proved able to manage the club and still play good ball at shortstop.
With all the stars now returned to baseball in 1946, the fans turned out en masse. As usual Ted Williams was tearing up the league. The Indians went into Boston on July 14, for a doubleheader. In the opening game Boudreau went 5-for-5 with four doubles and a homer. Williams went 4-for-5 with three homers, all to right field. The Tribe lost the game, 11-10. Between games Boudreau came up with the famous Williams shift. When Williams came to bat with the bases empty, Boudreau yelled, “Yo,” and all the fielders shifted to the right side of the field. Williams laughed, got back in the box, and promptly grounded out to Boudreau, playing in the second baseman’s position. It wasn’t the first time a shift had been employed, but against a star of Ted Williams’ magnitude, it captured attention.
The Indians went 68-86 in 1946. Boudreau hit .293, with 151 hits, six homers, and 62 runs batted in. On June 21, 1946, Bill Veeck became the principal owner of the Cleveland Indians, and vowed to make changes. The Tribe improved to 80-74 in 1947, and Boudreau batted .307, banging out 165 hits with four homers, and 67 RBIs. The nucleus was there and Bill Veeck turned loose his bloodhounds, sniffing out trades that would turn things around. First they acquired second baseman Joe Gordon from the Yankees, along with third baseman Eddie Bockman. The Indians added Gene Bearden to the pitching staff and Hal Peck to the outfield.
Boudreau was upbeat about the 1948 season but knew he had to produce a winner or his tenure as manager would be up. The Indians remained in or near first place all season, locked in a tight three-team race with the Yankees and Red Sox. They added a new pitcher in July by the name of Satchel Paige, an aged but legendary hurler from the Negro Leagues. J. Taylor Spink, in The Sporting News, accused Veeck of signing Paige only as a publicity stunt. But Paige proved his worth, and eventually Spink apologized to Veeck. Boudreau used Paige sparingly as a starter and a reliever, and he had a 6-1 mark in the heat of the pennant race.
Boudreau experienced some hard times during the ‘48 campaign. Veeck had brought Hank Greenberg into the Indians organization to serve as Veeck’s right-hand man and confidant. This dismayed Boudreau, who at best never had Veeck’s ear, and now had to go through another channel before conferring with him. Greenberg and Veeck were always questioning Boudreau’s moves. Every morning during home stands Boudreau had to trudge up to Veeck’s office, where Veeck and Greenberg would fire questions at him. Even on the road he could not escape the telephone constantly ringing with questions from his two bosses.
Nothing was going to stop Boudreau from driving his team to the 1948 American League pennant, not even the plethora of injuries that befell him. During a hard collision at second base, Lou sustained a shoulder contusion, a bruised right knee, a sore thumb, and a sprained ankle. Managing from the dugout while icing down his injuries during a doubleheader against the Yanks, he watched the Indians fall behind, 6-1. The Indians bounced back and scored three runs to make it 6-4. The Indians then loaded the bases, and Lou called time. After selecting his bat he announced himself as a pinch hitter. Injuries or no injuries, he was going to take matters into his own hands. Boudreau ripped a single between the legs of Joe Page, tying the game. The Indians went on to sweep the doubleheader, 8-6 and 2-1.
At the conclusion of the 1948 schedule the Indians and the Red Sox were tied for first place. Some critics said that Boudreau could have avoided the need for a playoff game had he used Paige more, but instead a single-game playoff at Fenway Park determined the American League champion. Boudreau selected Gene Bearden start the game. Bearden had been a sailor on the USS Helena when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and had been catapulted overboard. For two years he was in a hospital where they put a steel plate into his head and a metal hinge on one of his knees. Fully recovered, in 1948 he pitched the most important game of his life. Many question the choice of a left-hander in Boston with its looming left-field wall, but Boudreau felt that a knuckleball pitcher had a better chance against Boston’s powerhouse team. Feller called the decision “a stroke of genius and a shock to all of us.”
Boudreau took matters into his own hands and had a 4-for-4 performance that included two homers. When the final out was made and the Indians triumphed 8-3, Boudreau on his gimpy ankles rushed over to his wife. Bearden was on the shoulders of his mates, and, Bill Veeck, another casualty of World War II, hobbled out at top speed on his prosthetic leg to join the joyous mob. During his incredible season, Boudreau had slammed out 199 hits, belted 18 homers, and drove in 106 runs with a .355 average, all while guiding his team as manager. Boudreau was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1948.
The Indians capped off their 1948 season beating the Boston Braves and winning the World Series in six games. Boudreau batted .273 in the series with three runs batted in and fielded flawlessly. Lou Boudreau remains the only manager to win a World Series and win the Most Valuable Player Award in the same season.
Bill Veeck tore up Boudreau’s old contract and gave him a raise to $62,000 a year. Still, when the Indians failed to repeat in 1949, Boudreau knew his time was coming to an end. He felt that Hank Greenberg had a lot to do with his fate as manager. Boudreau didn’t mind Greenberg’s second guessing, but was upset that Greenberg never gave him reasons for disagreeing. Veeck was distant with Boudreau in 1949, never having much to say to him. Lou, playing all four infield positions, batted .284, with four homers and 60 RBIs.
Lou’s last season in Cleveland was 1950. Playing in only 81 games, he batted .269, with just one homer. Ellis Ryan took over as principal owner from Bill Veeck and put Greenberg in charge. As expected, on November 10, the Indians released Boudreau after 12 years as a player and nine as manager. The Red Sox acquired him in 1951 as a utility infielder. Playing in 82 games, he batted .267, with five homers and 47 runs batted in. After the 1951 season, the Red Sox named Boudreau manager. He played four games for the club in 1952, but was a bench-manager for the rest of his career.
After being fired by the Red Sox in 1954, Boudreau got a job as manager of the Kansas City Athletics, a bad club recently transplanted from Philadelphia. He lasted three years at Kansas City; the team finished sixth once and eighth twice during his tenure.
Boudreau was fired in August 1957. Not long after, Jack Brickhouse approached Lou about being the color man for the Chicago Cubs broadcast team. He auditioned and got the job. Lou was no Demosthenes, and he stumbled over difficult names of players, but his knowledge of the game and his uncanny ability to anticipate what would happen in certain situations was noted. For over two years Boudreau was the Cubs color man, but by 1960, Lou was back into the managing business for the team, while Charlie Grimm was shifted from skipper to the radio booth.
Lou was a part of the Cubs broadcast team for 30 years. When the station chose not to pick up his contract for the 1988 season, Lou was 71 years old, and finally retired, after having been a player, manager, and broadcaster for 50 years.
On July 27, 1970, Lou was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball, introduced Boudreau: “There are hitters in the Hall of Fame with higher batting averages, but I do not believe there is in the Hall of Fame a baseball man who brought more use of intellect and advocation of mind to the game than Lou Boudreau.”
