With a baseball Barnum's flair for profitable hokum, Bill Veeck touched a match to Lou Boudreau's old contract, and grinned while the flames consumed it. Then 31-year-old Lou Boudreau signed a new, two-year contract as player-manager of the Cleveland Indians. Neither Boudreau nor the Indians' President Veeck was telling the exact salary, but they encouraged guesses of about $65,000 a year.
The new salary was a big boost over Boudreau's 1948 pay of $52,000, and (according to Veeck) "by far the largest straight salary ever offered a player by the club."* But Lou had earned it with his spectacular triple performance—as...
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