Nick Coleman: An all-star who deserves more acclaim

Twins catcher Joe Mauer will appear in his third Major League Baseball All-Star game Tuesday and may one day become the third St. Paul-born Baseball Hall of Famer, landing in Cooperstown alongside Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor.

But there is another Minnesotan in the Hall of Fame who deserves more appreciation in his home state. He didn't just triumph in the bare-knuckled world of baseball at the start of the 20^th century. He also had to survive the cruelties and pressures of ignorance, racism and cartoon stereotyping of Native Americans that followed him throughout his career, even to his grave, when notice of his death provoked clichéd reports that he had gone to "the happy hunting grounds."

His name was Charles Albert Bender, born to an Ojibwe mother and a white father near Brainerd, Minn., in 1884. Like many Indian athletes, he was labeled "Chief," a sardonic nickname that lampoons any uppity notions an Indian ballplayer might harbor and mocks the poverty and powerlessness from which most Indian athletes have had to escape.

"Calling him 'Chief' was like saying, 'You may be a fantastic ballplayer, but you're still beneath me," says Minnesota journalist Tom Swift, the author of "Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star." "It's like calling a black man 'Boy.'

Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Swift's painstakingly researched book received the 2009 Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research for best biography. For a Minnesota baseball fan, it's must reading.

Bender died 55 years ago, a year after he was elected to the Hall of Fame. His story is as valuable as a history of a vanished era as it is of Bender, who ran away from home on the White Earth Reservation (winding up in the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania) after his father kicked him for not fetching a pail of water. Without that kick in the pants, Bender said, he might never have played pro ball.

His game statistics are impressive: 212 victories as a right-handed pitcher who played in five World Series for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1903-1911. Bender had a windmill windup, a high kick and a "nickel curve" (as he called it) that may have been baseball's first slider. (You can see vintage film of Bender on the author's website: tom-swift.com/weblog/post/1019). Of all the great players managed by Connie Mack, Bender's mentor and manager in Philadelphia, Mack liked to say Bender would be his first choice in any must-win situation.

Today's fans know that Jackie Robinson broke baseball's "color line" in 1947, when he became the first African-American to play in major leagues in the modern era. But few appreciate the struggles Bender and a handful of other Native Americans went through, decades earlier, when Indians were treated as racially inferior people whose culture had to be literally beaten out of them in boarding schools. When he became a ballplayer, Bender was subjected to constant taunting by fans and foes who whooped and hollered and aped Indian customs. (Remnants of that ignorance remain in Cleveland's "Chief Wahoo" and Atlanta's "tomahawk chop.")

Nearly every story about Bender in the nation's sports pages -- even the positive ones -- stooped to racist imagery and insults. Bender could never escape his "burden." But Swift says that Bender never bowed to it, either. Instead, he became famous for being unflappable, for shutting out the wahoo-ing yahoos, and letting his pitching do his talking. Of course, that's a stereotype, too: the silent, stoic Indian. But Bender's courage and character sustained his career, and come through in Swift's book loud and clear. It is Bender the man, not the ballplayer, who is most appealing.

"There was never a time when his race wasn't mentioned, or he wasn't referred to as 'a child of the forest' who was 'getting out his scalping knife,'" says Swift. "He always had to face a pressure that few other players -- fortunately -- ever knew."

Bender appeared nonchalant but was consumed, inside, by stress. Eventually, it may have gotten to him: In his later life, still active in baseball as a coach or a player in the minor leagues, he battled alcohol and a variety of ailments. He died of cancer in 1954, and is buried in Roslyn, Penn. His tombstone calls him "Chief."

But here's a more fitting monument: Bender will be shown pitching in a stone tribute called "The Story of Minnesota baseball'' being carved by St. Paul artist David Craig on the exterior of Target Field, the new Twins ballpark that opens next year.

At last, Charles Albert Bender will take the mound in the pantheon of our baseball heroes.

Nick Coleman is a senior fellow at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University. He can be reached at nickcolemanonline@gmail.com.