Frank 'Homerun' Baker

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Home-Run-Baker/
Original article written by David Jones
researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong

In an era characterized by urbanization and rapid industrial growth, Frank “Home Run” Baker epitomized the rustic values that were becoming essential to baseball’s emerging bucolic mythology. Born and raised in a tiny farming community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Baker developed his powerful back, arms, and hands by working long hours on his father’s farm. Like the rugged president who defined the century’s first decade, the taciturn Baker spoke softly but carried a big stick – a 52-ounce slab of wood that he held down at the handle and swung with all the force he could muster. One of the Deadball Era’s greatest sluggers, Baker led the American League or tied for the lead in home runs every year from 1911 to 1914, and earned his famous nickname with two timely round-trippers against the New York Giants in the 1911 World Series, Baker later insisted that his hard-swinging mentality came from his country roots. “The farmer doesn’t care for the pitchers’ battle that resolves itself into a checkers game,” he once declared. “The farmer loves the dramatic, and slugging is more dramatic than even the cleverest pitching,”

John Franklin Baker was born on March 13, 1886, the second son of Franklin A. and Mary C. Baker, on a farm just outside Trappe, Md., a tiny community located just a few miles east of the Chesapeake Bay.  Frank’s mother was a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and though Frank’s father spent his life toiling in anonymity on the farm, Baker later remembered his as a prodigiously strong and good-humored man.  “He never saw a trick in the circus he couldn’t perform,” Frank remembered.  “He [once] cartwheeled the length of the street in front of our house and finished off by landing on his feet in an upright position.”

Though the younger Baker never had his father’s flair for showmanship, he did inherit the old man’s strength and athletic ability, which was first put to good use as a pitcher and outfielder for the Trappe High School baseball team.  In 1905, Baker’s exploits with a local amateur team caught the eye of Trappe native Preston Day, who recommended the youngster to future major leaguer Buck Herzog, them managing a semipro outfit in nearby Ridgely.  After looking Baker over, Herzog signed Frank to a $5 per week contract and moved him to third base.

The following year, Baker earned $15 per week playing for the semipro Sparrows Point Club in Baltimore, and in 1907 he turned down an offer to play in the Texas League and instead signed with an independent club in Cambridge, Md.  At the end of the season received a tryout with Baltimore of the Eastern League, but after Baker collected just two singles in 15 at-bats, manager Jack Dunn concluded that he “could not hit” and released him.  In 1908, Baker joined the Reading Pretzels of the Class B Tri-State League, where he batted .299 in 119 games.  In September, Connie Mack, the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics who was looking for a third baseman to replace the aging Jimmy Collins, bought his contract.

After batting .290 in 31 at-bats at the end of the 1908 season, Baker was handed the starting job at third base at the outset of the 1909 campaign.  He was an instant success, supplying a much-needed dose of offense to the middle of the Philadelphia attack.  On May 29, Baker became the first man to hit a boll over the right field fence at the newly constructed Shibe Park, one of his four home runs for the season.  For his rookie year, Baker finished with a .305 batting average and .447 slugging percentage, good for fourth best in the American League.  His 85 RBI placed him third in the league, and his 19 triples led the circuit.  The young slugger also proved himself to he a deft handler of the stick, finishing third in the American League with 34 sacrifices.

A left-handed batter (though he threw from the right side), Baker positioned himself with his left foot firmly planted on the back line of the batter’s box, and his feet 18 inches apart in a slightly closed stance.  At 5’11”, 173 lbs., Baker did not cut an imposing figure at the plate, but the ease with which he managed his famed 52-ounce bat spoke volumes about his physical strength.  Asked to explain Baker’s power, Jake Daubert commented, “Frank Baker doesn’t look so big, but he has big wrists.”  Observers noted that when Baker swung, he seemed to give the ball an extra push by violently snapping his wrists at the point of contact.

Baker also acquitted himself well on the base paths and in the field though, like Honus Wagner, he appeared clumsy in his movements.  Bowlegged and husky, the lumbering Baker ran “like a soft-shell crab” according to one observer.  Nonetheless, he stole 20 or more bases every year from 1909 to 1913, and in his rookie season he led all third basemen in putouts, an accomplishment he repeated six more times during his 13-year career.

Baker’s outstanding rookie campaign was a major factor in the Athletics’ surge in the standings.  Winning 27 more games than they had in 1908, the Mackmen finished in second place, just 3 ½ games behind the Detroit Tigers.  In late August, the upstart A’s had actually enjoyed a 1 ½ game lead in the standings, before dropping three straight at Detroit’s Bennett Park.  It was in the first game of the pivotal series that Baker took part in one of the most controversial plays of the era when Detroit superstar Ty Cobb spiked him in the forearm as Baker was trying to tag Cobb out at the third base.  Frank had the wound wrapped and was able to stay in the game, but the play infuriated Mack, who went so far as to call Cobb the dirtiest player in baseball history.  But a few days later, a photograph of the play taken by William Kuenzel of the Detroit News showed Baker reaching across the bag to tag Cobb, who was sliding away from the third baseman.  The photograph vindicated Cobb and led the Detroit Free Press to declare that Baker was a “soft-fleshed darling” for complaining about the play.

Although he would continue to develop into one of the league’s best players, helping the Athletics win their first World Series in 1910 and batting .334 in 1911 with a league-leading 11 home runs, as a result of the Cobb spiking the mild-mannered Baker carried a reputation for being easily intimidated on the field.  It was this alleged weakness that John McGraw and the New York Giants tried to exploit in the 1911 World Series, with disastrous results.

In the bottom of the sixth inning of Game One, the Giants’ Fred Snodgrass was on second and saw a chance to take third when Fred Merkle struck out on a pitch in the dirt.  Following a strong throw from the catcher, Baker was blocking the base with the ball when Snodgrass went into the bag hard, spikes high, severely gashing Baker’s left arm.  Initially signaling an out, the umpire called the play safe when he saw the ball rolling on the ground.  The trainer came out to patch up Baker’s wounds, and the Giants went on to win 2-1.  But the tone had been set, and Baker took his revenge with his bat.

With the score tied at 1-1 in the bottom of the sixth in Game Two, Baker came to bat with one man on base and two outs, facing Giants’ lefthander Rube Marquard.  After running the count 1-1, Marquard threw Baker an inside fastball, which the slugger blasted over the right field fence for a two-run home run.  That proved the difference, as the A’s held on to win the game 3-1 and even the Series.  The following afternoon, Giants’ ace Christy Mathewson carried a 1-0 lead into the top of the ninth inning, when Baker came to the plate and again smashed a home run to right field, tying the score.

When the game moved into extra innings, the Giants once again tried to intimidate Baker.  In the bottom of the tenth, Snodgrass again tried to take third, this time on a passed ball.  Again, Baker blocked the base with the ball as Snodgrass came into the bag hard, spiked high, cutting into the third baseman’s arm a second time.  This time Baker held onto the ball.  The A’s went on to win the game in eleven innings, with Baker’s infield hit contributing to the winning two-run rally.  After the game, a Philadelphia reporter approached the “battle-scarred hero,” seeing the odor emanating from the bandages on Baker’s wounds.  When pressed, Baker finally broke his silence, and blurted out, “Yes, Snodgrass spiked me intentionally.  He acted like a swell-headed busher.”

The A’s went on to win the series 4-2, with Baker leading his team with nine hits, five runs batted in, and a .375 average.  His inspired play forever dispelled the notion that he could be intimidated on the diamond, but more importantly, Baker’s two dramatic home runs on consecutive days off two future Hall of Fame pitchers propelled him into the upper echelon of baseball legends.  Henceforth, for the rest of his life and beyond, he would be known as “Home Run” Baker.  The nickname would become something of a curiosity for future generations, weaned as if they were on a version of the game where home runs were a routine occurrence.  But in the context of Baker’s time, when it was only the rare slugger who could hit as many as 10 home runs in a season, the name connoted mythic power and strength.

Despite his newfound fame, Baker stayed a rugged individualist, retiring to his Maryland farm every offseason where he kept in shape by chopping wood and hunting for quail.  Sportswriters who managed to track him down for a hot stove feature soon learned that the quickest way to get Frank to open up was to go hunting with him.  “Frank is the best shot in Talbot County, and he’s wild about duck shooting,” one friend explained.  “Whenever you look at him he’s either just shot fifteen or twenty ducks or is just going to, and he’ll call you blessed if you save him the trouble of bringing up the subject.  After that, he’ll discuss anything under the sun with you.”

From 1912 to 1914, Baker continued to lead the league in home runs every season, and also collected his first RBI title in 1912, with a career-high 130, and a second in 1913, when he drove in 117 runs.  Continuing to rank among the league leaders in assists and putouts, Baker was also widely regarded as one of the game’s best fielding third basemen.  His all-around superlative play helped the Athletics win two more AL pennants and another World Championship in 1913, with Baker once again torching the Giants with a .450 batting average, one home run, and 7 RBI in the five-game Series.  After the Boston Braves shut down Baker and the Athletics in the 1914 Series, Mack began selling off his championship team.  Baker locked into a three-year contract, and tried to renegotiate for a higher salary, but Mack refused.

Both were stubborn men of principle and would not budge from their respective positions.  Baker announced he would be perfectly happy back on the farm, “batting a few out with the boys.”  Twenty-nine years old at the peak of a Hall of Fame career, which is exactly what he did.  In 1915 he played for the Trappe town team, the Upland club in suburban Pennsylvania, Atlantic City, and the Easton (Maryland) club of the independent Peninsula League.  Many local towns held Home Run Baker Days, presenting their hero with gifts in return for his services for the day’s game.

Under pressure from Ban Johnson, Connie Mack sold Baker’s contract to the Yankees for the 1916 season, ending the slugger’s lengthy holdout, but after a year’s absence from the major leagues Baker was no longer the dominant offensive force, he had been just two years earlier.  He put together four solid seasons for New York, but never led the league again in any significant offensive category.  Despite his fading skills, Baker was admired by his teammates for his work ethic and imposing locker-room presence.  Though Baker never led the league in home runs while a Yankee, he still anchored an offensive attack dubbed “Murderer’s Row” before Ruth even joined the team.  In 1919, aided tremendously by the Polo Grounds, the Yankees smashed a major league-leading 47 home runs, 10 of which came from Baker’s heavy stick.

Following the 1919 season, during the winter that New York became intoxicated by the news that Babe Ruth had been bought from the Boston Red Sox, Baker was humbled by personal tragedy.  An outbreak of scarlet fever struck the Baker home, killing Frank’s wife, the former Ottilie Tschantre.  His two infant daughters also caught the disease, though they eventually recovered.  Quarantined, paralyzed by grief, and preoccupied with taking care of his family, Baker announced that he had lost interest in baseball and would not play in 1920.  But within a few months, Baker was itching for baseball again.  He played a few games for his old Upland club, and after a trip to New York in August, agreed to return to the Yankees for the 1921 season.

The game was changing as Baker took on the role of a part-time player, and his teammate, Babe Ruth, redefined the home run.  Perhaps envious of Ruth’s fame, Baker bemoaned the “rabbit ball: that made the home run a more frequent occurrence.  “I don’t like to cast aspersions,” Baker later confided to a reporter, “but a Little Leaguer today can hit the modern ball as far as grown men could hit the ball we played with.”  Baker decided to hang up his major league spikes after playing in just 66 games during the 1922 season.  He married Margaret Mitchell of Baltimore and returned to his Maryland farms.

Though Baker was looking to devote more time to his passions of family, farming, and duck hunting, he was pressed into service as player manager of the Easton Farmers of the Class D Eastern Shore League in 1924.  It was there that he discovered Jimmie Foxx.  After Baker sold Foxx to Connie Mack, Baker was unceremoniously sacked as manager during the 1925 season, partly due to the “paltry” prize had received for the young slugger.

Continuing to work the family farms while raising his four children, Baker also served his community on the Trappe Town Board, functioned as a tax collector, was director of the State Bank of Trappe, and was active in the volunteer fire department.  He never lost his love for baseball and was an avid supporter of organized Little League when it began.  Inexplicably, considering that for many years Baker’s record was the greatest of any third baseman in baseball history, enshrinement in the Hall of Fame eluded him.  When finally selected by the Veterans Committee in 1955, the taciturn Baker responded, “It’s better to get a rosebud while you’re alive than a whole bouquet after you’re dead.”  Humble as ever, in his later years the man who had first popularized the home run and helped his teams win three world championships told a reporter, “I hope I never do anything to hurt baseball.”

Baker died of a stroke on June 28, 1963, and was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery of Talbot County in Easton, Md.

Baker died of a stroke on June 28, 1963, and was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery of Talbot County in Easton, Md.

This biography originally appeared in SABR’s “Deadball Stars of the American League” (Potomac Books, 2006), edited by David Jones.

Sources

For this biography, the author used several contemporary sources, especially those found in the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

* Full Name: John Franklin Baker
* Born: March 13, 1886, at Trappe, MD (USA)
* Died: June 28, 1963, at Trappe, MD (USA)

Charles Bender

The original article was written by Tom Swift
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/charles-bender/
Researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong

American Indian.  Innovator.  Renaissance man.  Charles Albert “
Chief” Bender lived a unique American Life, fashioned a Hall of Fame career, and was an important member of modern baseball’s first dynasty.
He silently struggled against racial prejudice, became a student of the game, and was a lifetime baseball man.  His legacy, however, is less nuanced than all of that.  Bender is known foremost for a rare ability to pitch under pressure.  “If I had all the men I’ve ever handled, and they were in their prime, and there was one game I wanted to win above all others,” said Philadelphia Athletics icon Connie Mack, who managed fellow all-time pitching greats Lefty Grove, Herb Pennock, Eddie Plank, and Rube Waddell, “Albert would be my man.”[1]

For nearly the entire second half of the twentieth century, Bender was the lone Minnesota representative in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  That he is no longer a household name in the North Star State is in part because he spent so little time in Minnesota and because some details about that time remain unclear.  Bender’s birthday, for one, is not certain.  His birth certificate, registered decades after the fact, says May 3, 1883.  Other sources list May 5, 1883.  Based on the federal Indian census and on Bender’s school records, the correct year, is almost certainly 1884.  Many sources list his birthplace as Brainerd but that is likely inaccurate.  According to research on Bender’s early conducted by researcher Robert Tholkes, within a year of Charley’s birth the family lived in an area close to Partridge Lake, 20 miles east of Brainerd.  No town existed on the site at the time.  So, it was most correct to say that Bender was born in Crow Wing Country.

Not long after Charles’s birth, the Bender family moved to the White Earth Reservation in the northwest section of the state.  Bender’s father, Albertus Bliss Bender (often referred to as William), was an early white settler in Minnesota, a homesteader-farmer of German-American descent.  Charley’s mother, Mary Razor Bender, was believed a member of the Mississippi Band of the Ojibwe.  Mary, whose Indian name was “Pay shaw de o quay,” gave birth to 11 children, perhaps as many as 14.  Charley was the fourth child born and the third son.  His troubled older brother, John Charles Bender, was an outfielder who bounced from team to team in the minor leagues.

At White Earth, the family lived in a log house on a small farm.  The Benders had to be self-sufficient, and they were not the only ones.  As scholar Melissa Meyer chronicles in The White Earth Tragedy, during the early years of Charley’s childhood White Earth was destitute.[2]  Things were so meager that as a young boy, Charley supposedly went to work, taking a job as a farmhand for a dollar a week.  At the time reservation families such as the Benders often sent their kids to boarding schools.  There were four on-reservation boarding schools, and Charley attended one of them for a short time, but at age 7 he was sent to the Educational Home, which was under the auspices of the Lincoln Institution, and off-reservation boarding school for American Indian children near Philadelphia.

Bender was at the Educational Home for five years before he went back to White Earth not long after he turned 12 in June of 1896.  He had been out of touch with his family for those years and he returned to a situation that had not improved and possibly regressed.  During his time away, too, the Bender family continued to grow; Charley was then one of nine children in the modest Bender home.  A few months after he returned to White Earth, according to a story Bender told The Sporting News as an adult, he and his older brother Frank ran away from home.  The two went to another White Earth farm and got jobs in the fields.  While there, a teacher from the Carlisle Indian School, a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, later made famous by Jim Thorpe-led powerhouse football teams, came through and recruited Frank and Charley to Carlisle.

In many respects, Charley Bender’s life was shaped during five years at Carlisle, which was run by Richard Henry Pratt, a military man who strictly drove his pupils to assimilate into the dominant white culture.  At Carlisle, Bender continued to develop his sharp mind – during his career, teammates, and sportswriters often attributed Bender’s success to his mental approach – and he met his first real baseball coach, legendary football maven Pop Warner.  After becoming a rare Carlisle Indian School graduate in 1902 – not long after he held his own in an exhibition loss to the National League’s Chicago Cubs – Bender was discovered by one of Connie Mack’s birddogs.

Bender joined the Philadelphia Athletics in 1903 and, as chronicled in Chief Bender’s Burden, had one of the great seasons in history for someone aged 19.[3]  After an impressive debut in which he pitched six innings in relief for a victory over Boston’s Cy Young, Bender earned his first complete-game shutout victory on April 27, defeating New York Highlanders pitcher and future Hall of Famer Clark Griffith.  By the end of the 1903 season, the rookie had 17 wins and a 3.07 earned-run average (ERA), which was about the league average.  His control was impressive from the start as he walked just 2.17 batters per nine innings.

Compared to his peers, Bender did not have an inordinate level of pitching stamina as he was plagued by poor health during several seasons.  (Bender battled several physical ailments and, later in his career, he drank heavily.)  He never pitched more than 270 innings in any season, a feat regularly reached by top-tier starters of the Deadball Era.  Near the end of the 1905 season, however, Bender showed he could labor long if given the change.  The Athletics needed to win two games against Washington to all but secure the pennant.  Bender won the first game 8-0 and came on as a relief pitcher in the second game to win that one as well.  It was an incredible one-day performance.  Bender pitched 15 innings, won two games, and struck out 14 Senators.  What’s more, he was the hitting hero.  A right-handed hitter who posted a lifetime .212 batting average, he made five hits in six official at-bats, including two triples and a two-run double in the fourth inning of the second game that pushed Philadelphia ahead.  On the day he drove in seven runs.

Bender’s poise in big games was most clear during the World Series, and he received his first such opportunity in 1905.  Starting the second game against John McGraw’s New York Giants, he delivered a masterful, four-hit, 3-0 shutout in the Athletics’ only victory of the series.  Following the 1905 season, and after studying New York’s Christy Mathewson up close, Bender worked to further develop his control.  He threw a well-directed fastball and a sharp-breaking curve – a man named Bender has to have one – that was a precursor to the slider, a pitch he may have invented.[4]  He also threw a submarine fadeaway – a pitch that moved like the contemporary screwball, away from a left-hander.  “I use fast curves, pitched overhand and sidearm, fastballs, high and inside, and an underhand fadeaway pitch with the hand almost down to the level of the knees,” Bender told Baseball Magazine in 1911.  “They are my most successful deliveries though a twisting slow one mixed up with them helps at times.”[5]

Bender was exceptionally bright.  His intelligence was recognized by teammates, opponents, and umpires, such as Billy Evans, who believed Bender was one of the smartest pitchers in the game.  “He takes advantage of every weakness,” Evans said in his Atlanta Constitution column, “and once a player shows him a weak spot he is marked for life by the crafty Indian.”[6]  Bender possessed a keen ability to focus on the task at hand, attributes that won the admiration of legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, who once called Bender one of “the greatest competitors I ever knew.”  Rice and Bender often played golf together, and Rice sometimes quoted Bender in his syndicated column.  “Tension is the greatest curse in sport,” said Bender, according to Rice.  “I’ve never had any tension.  You give the best you have – you win or lose.  What’s the difference if you give all you’ve got to give?”[7]

During his first eight years in the major leagues, Bender continued to hone his craft.  Though his win-loss record fluctuated, his ERA dropped every year, to a career-best 158 in 1910.   That year he also won 20 games for the first time, notching 23 victories against only five defeats, which gave him the league’s best winning percentage (.821).  Among his victories that season was a no-hitter thrown May 12 against the Cleveland Indians.  Bender was nearly perfect; he faced just 27 hitters as the lone man to reach, shortstop Terry Turner, was caught stealing after a walk.  Bender won the opening game of the 1910 World Series, and the Athletics beat the Chicago Cubs in five games – Philadlephia’s first world championship.

The following year, Bender helped the A’s win a second title, as his 17-5 record again led the league in winning percentage (.773).  Facing the New York Giants in the World Series, Bender pitched brilliantly, winning two of three starts, posting a 1.04 ERA, and striking out 20 batters in 26 innings.  Philadelphia failed to win a third straight pennant in 1912 as injuries, illness, and a team suspension for alcohol use limited Bender to a 13-8 record in just 171 innings.{8]  But the following year the A’s were again the premier team, as Bender won 20 games and also led the league with 13 saves (retroactively calculated).  In that year’s World Series – the A’s and Giants squared off one more time – Bender won two games and the Athletics captured their third world championship in four years.

Bender’s World Series career line was blemished in 1914, as the favored Philadelphia Athletics were swept by the so-called “Miracle” Boston Braves.  Bender had put up a fine regular season record, winning 14 straight games during one stretch, finishing the year with a 17-3 mark and a league-leading .850 winning percentage.  But, in his only appearance in the World Series, Bender started the opening game and surrendered six earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.  It was his last appearance in an A’s uniform.

The next year, Bender signed with the Federal League and was assigned to Baltimore.  Pitching for the last-place Terrapins, he went 4-16 and was released by the team in September.  After the 1915 season, Bender was picked up by the Philadelphia Phillies, where, pitching mostly in relief, he had a 7-7 record in 1916.  In 1917, he showed flashes of his previous level of performance with an 8-2 mark and a 1.67 ERA but nonetheless was released by the Phillies at the end of the season.  During the 1918 season, Bender went to work in the Philadelphia shipyards to contribute to the war effort.

His life in baseball did not end, however.  When the war was over, Bender began a successful career as a minor-league player and manager.  He was offered opportunities to return to the big leagues but enjoyed managing so much – and probably earned as much money in the minor as he would have in the majors – that he declined.  Bender managed Richmond of the Virginia League in 1919 and also dominated the league as a pitcher, winning 29 games against two defeats.  Subsequently, he pitched and managed at New Haven in the Eastern League (1920-21); Reading (1922), and Baltimore (1923) in the International League; and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the Mid-Atlantic League in 1927.  During that period he also spent several years as a baseball coach for the U.S. Naval Academy.

Bender pitched one more in the major leagues.  In 1925, while employed as a coach for his friend, Chicago White Sox manager Eddie Collins, he worked a gimmicky frame in a game against the Boston Red Sox – the club he had beaten for his first major-league victory 22 years prior.  Bender, 42 at the time, allowed two runs on a walk and a home run but did manage to retire the side,

During the 1930s, Bender managed the Eastern team of the independent House of David.  He also managed Erie in the Continental League in 1932.  Wilmington of the Inter-State League in 1940, Newport News of the Virginia League in 1941, and Savannah of the Southern Association in 1946.  Thereafter he was associated with the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Athletics as a coach or scout.  At 61 he began pitching batting practice to the Athletics and years later served as the A’s de facto pitching coach.

Over a 16-year major-league career, Bender won 212 games and posted a .625 winning percentage.  He pitched to avoid the bats of the American League hitters, and every time he did, he stared into the face of racism.  Though he often showed a calm, levelheaded demeanor, he was seldom portrayed in newspapers, cartoons, or words on the street without references – many of them demeaning, few of them subtle – to his race.  Through this period of his American Indian heritage, Bender resented the bigotry and the moniker he and nearly every other Indian ballplayer received.  “I may not name to be presented to the public as an Indian, but as a pitcher,” he told Sporting Life in 1905.[9]  The writers didn’t listen.  Though his manager called him Albert, prevailing stereotypes rarely were absent from baseball coverage and bench jockeying.  Bender didn’t publicly protest, but he signed his autograph as “Charles” or some derivative.  Eventually, he was called “Chief” so often (and so often with affection) that he allowed the name to be etched into his tombstone.  But the tacit racism never went away.  Even decades after his retirement, Bender’s obituary in The Sporting News carried the headline, “Chief Bender Answers Call to Happy Hunting Grounds.”[10]

As noted in Chief Bender’s Burden, as a way to keep his mind occupied, Bender engaged in an inordinate number of sports and hobbies outside of baseball, and he was exceptional at many of them.  He was often referred to as one of the top trap shooters (he shot live birds and clay pigeons) in the country.  He loved to hunt and fish and was an outstanding golfer.  Bender’s favorite hobbies were gardening, playing billiards, and painting oil landscapes.  He occasionally served as a consultant to people in the diamond and textiles trades.  He had a long post-major-league career in retail, selling, among other things, sporting goods and men’s clothing.

Bender’s life partner was Marie (Clement) Bender, whom he married in 1904.  The couple’s marriage, which lasted nearly 50 years, did not produce any children.  In 1953, Bender became the first Minnesota-born player enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and he stayed only one until Dave Winfield joined him in 2001.  On May 22, 1954, the year following the vote, Bender died a few weeks shy of his 71^st birthday and a few weeks before his induction ceremony.  He had previously suffered a heart attack and was receiving treatment for prostate cancer.  Bender is buried in Hillside Cemetery in Roslyn, Pennsylvania.

A version of this biography appeared in SABR’s “Minnesotans in Baseball,” edited by Stew Thornley (Nodin, 2009).

Sources

Portions of this biography are drawn from the author’s book Chief Bender’s Burden (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

Research conducted by Robert Tholkes, written in an excellent article called “Chief Bender: The Early Years,” published in the 1983 edition of the Baseball Research Journal of the Society for American Baseball Research, was the solid foundation upon which I conducted further exploration about the rough details of Bender’s first years, his family, and life at White Earth. Beverly Hermes supplied added genealogical research aid. The Charles Albert Bender file at the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bemidji, Minnesota, was useful. Facts about the Bender family were also found in the federal Indian census and the U.S. census.

Paulette Fairbanks Molin’s article, “Training the Hand, the Head, and the Heart: Indian Education at Hampton Institute,” published in the fall 1988 issue of Minnesota History, revealed facts about the Bender family.

Articles in a multiple-part series about Bender’s life published in The Sporting News, December 24-31, 1942, were used for information about Bender’s childhood, including the story of how Bender and his brother ran away.

Notes

1.     The Connie Mack quote that if he could pick
        one pitcher for a big game, “Albert would be
        my man,” has been included in nearly every
        biographical profile ever written about Bender,
        including David Pietrusza, Matthew Silverman,
        and Michael Gershman, editors, Baseball:
        The Biographic Encyclopedia (Total Sports,
        2000), 80. Mack made the statement often in
        his later years.
2.     Melissa L. Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy:
        Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota
        Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920 (Lincoln:
        University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
3.     Tom Swift, Chief Bender’s Burden (Lincoln:
        the University of Nebraska Press, 2008).
4.     There is no one agreed-upon inventor of the
        slider. One source among several sources
        consulted on this topic was The Neyer/James
        Guide to Pitchers A Historical Compendium of
        Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches by Rob Neyer
        and Bill James (Fireside, 2004). E-mail
        correspondence with Bill James was also useful.
5.    “Big Chief Bender,” Baseball, Vol. 7, August
       1911: 64.
6.    Billy Evans, “Chief Bender Discusses Pitchers
       and Pitching; Control Greatest Asset,” Atlanta
       Constitution, December 28, 1913: 5. There is
       no one agreed upon the inventor of the slider.
       One source among several sources consulted
       on this topic was The Neyer James Guide to
       Pitchers: A Historical Compendium of Pitching,
       Pitchers, and Pitches by Rob Neyer and Bill
       James (Fireside, 2004). E-mail correspondence
       with Bill James was also useful.
7.    Grantland Rice wrote about Bender in several
       columns during and after Bender’s major-
       league career, including a column that
       appeared in the September 2, 1915, Boston
       Daily Globe.
8.    Regarding Bender’s alcohol use, Connie Mack
       discussed problems he had with Bender and a
       a teammate in the March 6, 1950, New York
       Times  Bender’s drinking habits in the 1912
       season were discussed most prominently in the
       Philadelphia North American’s coverage that
       year, from September 12 on. Other useful
       information was found in an article under the
       headline “The Fallen Stars of 1912 Season”
       in the September 21, 1912, Philadelphia
       Evening  Telegraph. One of Bender’s contracts,
       according to his salary history card at the
       National Baseball Hall of Fame (thanks to
       Gabriel Schechter for supplying a copy),
       said that he must “[refrain] from intoxicating
       liquors.”
9.    Francis C. Richter, “Philadelphia News,”
       Sporting Life, August 5, 1905: 25.
10.  “Chief Bender Answers Call to Happy Hunting
       Grounds,” The Sporting News, June 2, 1954: 32.

* Full Name: Charles Albert Bender
* Born: May 5, 1884, at Crow Wing County, MN (USA)
* Died: May 22, 1954, at Philadelphia, PA (USA)