Despite pulling in multimillion-dollar salaries, players receive money for meals and incidentals while on the road. It's not Denny's Grand Slam breakfast and Subway footlong money, either. Two of their per diems could feed a family of four for a week.

This season, the daily meal allowance for Major League Baseball players is $89.50. (It's $20 in the minors.) In the NFL, players travel the day before a game and dine as a team at their hotels. They also get $90 a day - $18 for breakfast, $27 for lunch and $45 for dinner, as specified in the contract. The real kings of the culinary court are NBA players. They get $114 per day, enough to cover, theoretically, the 48-ounce double porterhouse for two, carved tableside, at Morton's, The Steakhouse, at $95.

Like player salaries and the price of stadium beer, meal allowances have escalated though the roof.

Former Indians ace Sam McDowell recalled that in 1962, his first full season in the majors, he made $6,000 and was given $9 a day in meal money. That was when a guy could order cereal with fruit and a cup of coffee for a buck at the team hotel, which he usually did.

"Back then, it almost lasted each day," McDowell said. "A big dinner for me was $6 or $7 with a dollar tip."

Baseball's per diem had climbed to $19.50 when Tribe center fielder Rick Manning made the club in 1975, and reached about $40 by the time he retired in 1987. The allowance has more than doubled again since, but that's not all that's changed, foodwise.

When he played, postgame clubhouse meals consisted of boxes of pizza and buckets of fried chicken. "You go into a clubhouse now," the Indians broadcaster said, "the spreads they put out are just like restaurants."

One recent postgame menu posted in the visitors' clubhouse at Progressive Field featured grilled pork chops with hunter sauce, roasted salmon with maple bourbon glaze and ginger-smoked chicken in lemon thyme jus.

Meal allowances, with built-in annual cost-of-living increases, are spelled out in each league's Collective Bargaining Agreement. Baseball players may get the lowest per diem, but they travel the most - 81 road games per season. This season, that's a sweet $7,249.50.

Only the amount over federal guidelines for what companies should reimburse traveling employees for meals and incidentals - $39 to $64 a day, depending on the destination - is taxable income. The rest is tax-free.

"It's called 'meal money,' " said Mike Seghi, the Indians director of team travel, "but it's kind of living money." He hands each player envelopes of cash for an entire road trip as they board the plane.

Ballplayers usually use the dough for dining out and to cover cab fare, toiletries, maybe room service and the $40 to $50 per day that most players tip the visiting clubhouse manager for laying out impressive pregame and postgame spreads.

However, meal allowances don't come with instructions. Players don't have to turn in receipts to report how the money's spent. They can use the allowance as they wish.

Or not use it. Eat cheaply and the per diem becomes a nice little bonus.

Former Cavaliers guard Craig Ehlo said teammate Phil Hubbard would buy home appliances with his meal money.

"He passed that [strategy] on to me," said Ehlo, who remembers getting $5 a day for meals in basketball's minor leagues. "I bought my first washer-dryer with my training camp per diem."

Junk food isn't off-limits, but teams want their investments eating well. And most do.

"Lots of sushi and high-end steaks," said Seghi, who started doling out meal money for the Indians when those envelopes contained about $20.

Today, that covers a jar of nuts from the mini-bar.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: blubinger@plaind.com, 216-999-5531