Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star Ron Briley Tom Swift. Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 339 pp. Cloth, $24.95. In Chief Bender's Burden, journalist Tom Swift provides an entertaining biography of Charles Albert Bender, who was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1953. Nevertheless, Swift often relies upon conjecture to discuss the response of Bender as a Native American to the racial stereotypes of baseball and American society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Relying primarily upon newspaper and periodical accounts of Bender's life and baseball career, Swift paints a picture of an athlete who attempted to assimilate into the dominant white culture, but who finally succumbed to societal pressures and sought solace in alcohol. The major problem for Swift's study is that the taciturn pitcher rarely shared his innermost thoughts about topics such as race, so the author is often reduced to assuming how Bender must have felt when subjected to racial profiling and caricature. Swift frames his account of Bender's life around the pitcher's final disastrous appearance for the Philadelphia Athletics during the 1914 World Series against the Boston "Miracle" Braves. The flashbacks to episodes in Bender's [End Page 158] early life are developed in a somewhat cinematic fashion as the reader is returned at the end of each chapter to the struggling Bender on the mound attempting to retire the Boston lineup. The larger historical and cultural context in which Bender lived is best developed in the chapters on the young Native American before he entered professional baseball. Charles Albert Bender was born on 5 May 1884 in Minnesota. His father was of German-American descent, while his mother was a member of the Chippewa nation. The family lived in difficult economic circumstances on the White Earth Indian Reservation. Bender often quarreled with his father, and in 1896 he left his family for the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Rather than being forcibly separated from his family and culture through the Indian boarding school experience, Swift observes that Bender embraced the opportunity to leave his troubled family structure. At Carlisle, Bender was exposed to the assimilationist policies of school founder Richard Henry Pratt, who, along with legendary coach Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner, believed that sport provided an opportunity to instill character in the school's Native population. Based upon examination of some compositions prepared by Bender during his Carlisle years, Swift concludes that the athlete internalized Pratt's philosophy or prudently pretended to have adopted his ideas. Swift writes, "Carlisle was a place where American Indians learned to self-censor and where incorrect behavior was sometimes met with a lashing. Besides, Charley [Bender] knew he wanted a place in the dominant culture, so he was willing to tell the dominant culture that he accepted, or at least conceded, its version of the narrative" (55). After graduation from Carlisle in 1902, Bender pitched for Dickinson College and the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Athletic Club. Appearing with the Harrisburg club, Bender defeated the Chicago Cubs 3–1 and gained the attention of major league scouts. After signing with the Philadelphia Athletics and their manager/owner Connie Mack, the nineteen-year-old Bender won seventeen games as a rookie in 1903. Off the playing field, Bender established a reputation as the stoic Native American, unflappable and taciturn. Swift argues, Given that this sensitive unheralded rookie happened to be an American Indian trying to dispel a set of stereotypes that were so pervasive they might as well have been written on the outfield wall, it's not hard to understand why he chose his words carefully. He would have enough doubts without making more with loose lips. (97) Between 1903 and 1914, Bender won 193 games for the Athletics. He played an essential role in the 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914 American League pennants garnered by the team, as well as the world championships of 1910, 1911, and 1913. Swift maintains that during Bender's heyday with the Athletics, [End Page 159] the athlete apparently embodied the assimilationist ideas of Carlisle Indian...