Day 24: 30 baseball books in 30 days of April
The book: "Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star"
The author: Tom Swift
How to find it: University of Nebraska Press, 346 pages, $24.95.
Where we'd go looking for it: On the publisher's website, as well as Powell's and Amazon.
The scoop: This has movie script written all over it, almost like Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit."
Here's Charles Albert Bender, nicknamed "Chief" because of his American Indian heritage, building a Hall of Fame career while facing the injustices of a racially intolerant world between 1903 and 1925. If you look at the write-up they have for him on the Baseball Hall of Fame site, Bender "overcame subtle discrimination, and a derisive nickname, to become one of the top pitchers of his era."
Guess again.
His Hall plaque makes note in the first three words: "Famous Chippewa Indian" before going over his 212 wins for the Philadelphia teams of the AL and NL in a 16-year career. He wasn't inducted into the Hall until the year before his death in 1954, by the veteran's committee, even though he had the full endorsement of former manager Connie Mack.
Swift writes about Bender's journey from the White Earth Reservation to the Carlisle Indian School (made famous by Jim Thorpe) to his development of the slider as a big-leaguer.
Much more than an historical account of Bender's life, it puts the context of the country into perspective and give it that feel of a much deeper meaning.
How it goes down in the scorebook: Slider for strike three.
Other recent books about Chief Bender:
"Money Pitcher: Chief Bender And the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation" by William C. Kashatus, 2006.
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