Money Pitcher: Chief Bender and the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation

By William C. Kashatus

Charles Albert Bender was one of baseball's most talented pitchers. By the end of his major league career in 1925, he had accrued 212 wins and more than 1,700 strikeouts, and in 1953, he became the first American Indian elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. But as a high-profile Chippewa Indian in a bigoted society, Bender knew firsthand the trauma of racism. In Money Pitcher: Chief Bender and the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation, William C. Kashatus offers the first biography of this compelling and complex figure.

Bender's career in baseball began on the sandlots of Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he distinguished himself as a hard-throwing pitcher. Soon, in 1903, Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack signed Bender to his pitching staff, where he was a mainstay for more than a decade. Mack regarded Bender as his "money pitcher"--the hurler he relied on whenever he needed a critical victory. But with success came suffering. Spectators jeered Bender on the field and taunted him with war whoops. Newspapers ridiculed him in their sports pages. His own teammates derisively referred to him as "Chief," and Mack paid him less than half the salary of other star pitchers.

This constant disrespect became a major factor in one of the most controversial episodes in the history of baseball: the alleged corruption of the 1914 World Series. Despite being heavily favored going into the Series against the Boston Braves, the A's lost four straight games. Kashatus offers compelling evidence that Bender intentionally compromised his performance in the Series as retribution for the poor treatment he suffered.

Money Pitcher is not just another baseball book. It is a book about social justice and Native Americans' tragic pursuit of the white American Dream at the expense of their own identity. Having arrived in the major leagues only thirteen years after the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, Bender experienced the disastrous effects of governmental assimilation policies designed to quash indigenous Indian culture. Yet his remarkable athleticism and dignified behavior disproved popular notions of Native American inferiority and opened the door to the majors for more than 120 Indians who played baseball during the first half of the twentieth century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0271028629
• ISBN13: 9780271028620
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book About An Underrated Pitcher

Charles Albert Bender, beter known as "Chief" Bender, was a premier pitcher for the Philadelphia A's in the early 1900s. Possessing a fine fastball, curve, plenty of control, concentration and observation, he won 212 games in the major leagues and earned a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The other half of the story is that he was born on a reservation in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, to a white father and half-Anishinaabe (Chippewa) mother. They later moved to the White Earth Indian reservation in northeast Minnesota, until Charles was sent off to the East to go to school. At this time, the U.S. government's program of assimilation of Native American children into the white world was in full swing, and set off Bender's nearly life-long struggle of an Indian living, working and trying to succeed in a white world. A hundred years ago, those who "looked different" - were from a different ethnic origin - were subjected to racism, slights and insults as a matter of course in everyday life. But Bender succeeded in the white world, though at a terrible price to his health. The author of this book, William Kashatus, has done an excellent job in researching the life of Charles Bender; there are places where the information is sketchy, but due only to a lack of data, such as Bender's early life. The one area that the author has left me in doubt is in his claim that the 1914 World Series may have been "thrown" by some members of the A's, among them Bender. His case did not convince me sufficiently that this happened; the information semmed mostly circumstantial and even that doesn't jibe with Bender's nature. In reading this book, one may get a feel of what the times were like then, in America, for the American Indian being assimilated in society and for the heroic Bender, who endured so much during his time and performed with grace, skill and determination to be known for talents as a pitcher, not just as a Native American trying to get along in white American society.