Bauer was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, the youngest of nine children to an Austrian immigrant who had lost his leg in an aluminum mill and had been reduced to bartending.

With little money coming into the home, Bauer was forced to wear clothes made out of old feed sacks, helping shape his hard-nosed approach to life.

He played baseball and basketball at East St. Louis Central Catholic High School, suffering a broken nose from errant elbow in the latter that was never fixed.

While deployed to the Pacific Theater Bauer contracted malaria on Guadalcanal, however he recovered from that well enough to earn 11 campaign ribbons in 32 months of combat, including two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts (for being wounded in action), and the Navy Commendation Medal.

Unfortunately Bauer's older brother Herman, once a solid hitting minor league catcher for the Chicago White Sox organization, never made it back home: after landing in the Normandy invasion, he was killed in action on July 12th, 1944, and is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

In his 14-season Major League Baseball career, Bauer had a .277 batting average with 164 home runs and 703 RBIs in 1,544 games played.

At the close of the 1959 season, Bauer was dealt by the Yankees to the Kansas City Athletics in a trade which brought them future home run king Roger Maris (1961).

He managed the team through the end of the 1962 season, going 107-157 over 264 games (for a .405 win percentage), and the A's finishing ninth in the ten-team American League both years.

Bolstered by the acquisition of future Hall of Fame outfielder Frank Robinson - and his Triple Crown 1966 season — the Orioles won their first AL pennant and the 1966 World Series championship.

When the Orioles entered the 1968 All-Star break in third place and 10+1⁄2 games behind the eventual World Series champion Detroit Tigers, Bauer was dismissed on July 10 in favor of first-base coach Earl Weaver.