Louis "Lou" Boudreau (July 17, 1917 – August 10, 2001) was an American Major League Baseball player and manager. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1970. He was also a radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs of the National League.
In 1948, he won the American League Most Valuable Player Award and managed the Cleveland Indians to the World Series title.
Boudreau was an eight-time All Star Game selection, starting three times. He won the 1944 AL batting title (.327), and led the league in doubles in 1941, 1944, and 1947. He led AL shortstops in fielding eight times. Boudreau still holds the record for hitting the most consecutive doubles in a game (four), set on July 14, 1946.
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Boudreau was born in Harvey, Illinois, to a father of French ancestry and a Jewish mother. He was raised Catholic. Boudreau graduated from Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois. While at Thorton, Boudreau guided the "Flying Clouds" to three straight Illinois high school championship games, finishing first in 1933 and second in 1934 and 1935.
He also graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, excelling in sports at both schools. He was captain of the basketball and baseball teams at the University of Illinois, when Cleveland Indians general manager Cy Slapnicka paid him an undisclosed sum in return for agreeing to play baseball for the Indians following graduation. Boudreau's father complained to the Big Ten Conference, and league officials ruled him ineligible for collegiate sports. During his junior and senior years at Illinois, he played pro basketball with the Hammond All-Americans of the National Basketball League.
Boudreau has been counted in recent years on lists of Jewish baseball players. As his mother's parents were practicing Jews, he qualifies as a Jew according to the usual standard. On the other hand, his parents divorced when he was 7 years old, and he was raised by his father as a Christian. Furthermore, Boudreau did not publicly identify as a Jew during his career, as did Hank Greenberg and other contemporaries. Boudreau's 1993 autobiography does not contain the words "Jew", "Jewish", or "Judaism".
Boudreau made his major league debut on September 9, 1938 for the Cleveland Indians, at the age of 21, playing first base in a single game. In 1939, manager Ossie Vitt informed Boudreau, who normally played third base, that he would have to move to shortstop as Ken Keltner already had the regular third base job.
In 1940, his first full year as a starter, he batted .295 with 46 doubles and 101 RBI. He was also selected to play in his first All Star Game.
Boudreau helped make history in 1941 as a key figure in stopping the 56-game hitting streak by Joe DiMaggio. After Ken Keltner made two fine stops at third base earlier in the game, Boudreau snagged a bad hop grounder at short barehanded and started a double play to retire Dimaggio. He finished the season with a .257 batting average and a league leading 45 doubles. He also turned 134 double plays in 1944, the most ever by a player-manager in Major League history.
After the season, owner Alva Bradley promoted manager Roger Peckinpaugh to general manager and appointed Boudreau as the player-manager. Boudreau was 25 years old. Boudreau managed the Indians throughout World War II. Playing basketball had put a strain on Boudreau's ankles which later developed arthritis and he was classified 4-F and thus, ineligible for military service. Upon assuming ownership in 1947, Bill Veeck, after being approached by Boudreau, renewed the player-manager agreement with mixed feelings on both sides. Although the results were personally contentious, they did win the World Series in 1948, Cleveland's first championship in 28 years, and both Boudreau and Veeck were public in admitting the other's role in the success.
Relieved of his Cleveland managerial duties following the 1950 season, he was released as a player by Cleveland and signed with the Boston Red Sox, playing full-time in 1951 and becoming the team's player-manager in 1952 and as manager in 1953 and 1954. He became the first manager was of the Kansas City Athletics in 1955, after their move from Philadelphia. He was fired after 104 games in 1957, replaced by Harry Craft. He served as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in 1960.
Through 2010, he was third all-time in career hits (behind Shawn Green), fourth in batting average (behind Buddy Myer), and fifth in RBIs (behind Sid Gordon) among Jewish major league baseball players.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1970 with 77.33% of the vote. The same year, Boudreau had his number (5) retired by the Cleveland Indians.
Boudreau is credited with inventing the infield shift, and it came to be known colloquially as the "Boudreau Shift." Boudreau, noticing that Red Sox great Ted Williams was a dead-pull hitter, moved most of his players to right of second base whenever Williams was at bat, leaving only the third baseman and left fielder with any range on the left side of the infield--and they, too, were shifted very close to second base, far away from their normal positions. Williams notably refused the obvious advice from teammates to either start hitting in the opposite direction or at least casually bunt the ball to third base, thus forcing the opposing teams to play him more "honest." Williams stubbornly refused to change his swing or his approach, and yet his hitting ability didn't suffer when teams put the Boudreau Shift on.
Boudreau later admitted that the shift was more about psyching out Williams rather than playing him to pull. "I always considered The Boudreau Shift a psychological, rather than a tactical victory," wrote Lou Boudreau in his book, Player-Manager.
The Lou Boudreau Award is given every year to the Cleveland Indians' Minor League Player of the Year.
Boudreau served as an announcer for the Cubs in 1958 and 1959 before switching roles with manager Charlie Grimm in 1960. After one season as Cubs manager, Boudreau returned to the radio booth and remained there until 1987. Boudreau also served as the Chicago Bulls' radio play by play announcer from 1966–1968.
Having a knowledgeable Hall of Fame announcer also affected at least one game. In the 1970s the Cubs were losing by 6 runs in the 4th inning in the 2nd game of a double header, when the umpires called the game due to darkness (no lights yet at Wrigley Field). It was announced that the game would be picked up at the same point tomorrow, as normally happened. But Boudreau knew the ground rules better than anyone else in the park, it turned out, for he went down quickly to the clubhouse and pointed out to the umps that if a game is not yet an official game, the whole game must be replayed (as in a rainout). The umpires looked it up, agreed with Boudreau, and wiped out the 6 run deficit for the Cubs.
Boudreau married Della DeRuiter in 1938 and they had four children. His daughter Sharyn married Denny McLain, a former star pitcher with the Detroit Tigers.
Boudreau died in 2001 in Frankfort, Illinois and is interred in Pleasant Hill Cemetery.
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