Players did not receive salaries during the training season and were expected to have their own spending money, while the team picked up the cost of hotels, meals, and travel. Dean, though, did not have any money of his own. He solved that problem by cavalierly signing hotel, restaurant, and store receipts, and asking that the pieces of paper, so quickly forgotten when he walked out the door, be forwarded to the Cardinals' business office.

To pass the time, he also took up golf, went to see wrestling matches at the local American Legion hall, wrote constant demands for advances on his salary to the Cardinals front office, and treated himself to endless amounts of soda, cigars, cigarettes, fountain pens, sunglasses, key chains, comic books, and assorted other goods and novelties.

Team president Branch Rickey's solution was to notify all shops, restaurants, and hotels in Bradenton that the Cardinals would no longer honor any of Dean's signed receipts. Henceforth, Dean's allowance was being drastically cut back to one dollar a day—literally, a single dollar each morning.

Each morning thereafter, a humiliated Dean had to report to Lloyd and sign a receipt reading "Received today $1—Dizzy Dean." That was how Dean became the original "dollar-aday" man of baseball legend.