[a] In 1948, Boudreau won the American League Most Valuable Player Award and managed the Cleveland Indians to the World Series title.

[2] His father was of French-Canadian ancestry, his mother was Jewish, and both of his maternal grandparents were observant Orthodox Jews with whom when he was young he celebrated Passover seders.

[7] Boudreau attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity and captain of the basketball and baseball teams.

During the 1936–37 basketball and baseball seasons, Boudreau led each Fighting Illini team to a Big Ten Conference championship.

Due to this agreement, Boudreau was ruled ineligible for collegiate sports by the Big Ten Conference officials.

[12] Boudreau helped make history in 1941 as a key figure in stopping the 56-game hitting streak by Joe DiMaggio.

After two sparkling stops by Keltner at third base on hard ground balls earlier in the game, Boudreau snagged a bad-hop grounder to short barehanded and started a double play retiring DiMaggio at first.

Details of possibly trading him for Vern Stephens of the St. Louis Browns in 1947 only attracted fans to the side of Boudreau.

He then became the first manager of the Kansas City Athletics in 1955 after their move from Philadelphia until he was fired after 104 games in 1957 and replaced by Harry Craft.

Boudreau did play-by-play for Cub games in 1958–59 before switching roles with manager "Jolly Cholly" Charlie Grimm in 1960.

The umpires called the National League office, found Boudreau was correct, and removed the two-run Cubs deficit.

He died on August 10, 2001, due to cardiac arrest at St. James Medical Center in Olympia Fields, Illinois.