They called him Chief. Of course. Nearly every man of Native descent who stepped onto a ball field during the first half of the century was called Chief. The moniker, some have likened it to calling a black man '"boy", was a tidy way for whites to place a race of people under their thumb. As scholar Jeffrey Powers-Beck said, the tag was a means to "appropriate" Bender in the "manner of the cigar-store Indian or the Wild West Show Indian." Historian John P. Rossi called the epithet "a perfect reflection of the naivete and racism of the age." Bender resented the constant bigotry. "I do not want my name to be presented to the public as an Indian, but as a pitcher," he said almost a decade before. The newspapermen didn't listen.
There was scarcely a time when Bender was written about when his race was not prominently mentioned. Bender didn't win games. He scalped opponents. Bender wasn't a talented pitcher with an impressive repertoire. He pitched in his best Indian way. Bender wasn't a player with guile. He was Mack's wily redskin. The prejudiced descriptions were (p.4) almost unyielding. Consider a lead sentence following Bender's effort in Game 4 of the 1911 World Series; "Charles Albert Bender, a child of the forest, pitched the Athletics to victory..." After BNender's sterling performance in the 1905 World Series, Sporting Life writer Charles Zuber said that "Bender, according to reports, is a typical representative of his race,..."
Bender was often portrayed as a caricature and was the subject of many cartoons..." p. 4-5
Many other whites saw Indians as exotic novelties, and Bender was their noble savage. It became en vogue to nickname teams the Braves or Indians. The club Bender was about to face was one example. As Powers-Beck pointed out, teams all over the country began calling themselves Indians and recruiting American Indian players as gate attractions. In describing such teams' fortunes the press had easy, colorful verbs, and readers gobbled them by the spoonful.
Children who loved to "play Indian"-How to Play Indian:Directions for Organizing a Tribe of Indians and Making Their Teepees in True Indian Style was published some dozen years before-often approached Bender when he was in public and greeted him by mimicking Indian gestures. p. 6
Baseball wasn't just popular; it was part of being an American. p.8
The first decade of Bender's career coincided with an explosion in (p.8) baseball attendance. Americans ate box scores for breakfast; even those rarely, if ever, afforded the chance to see a game looked for every scrap of news about favorite teams and players. And by the start of the 1914 World Series that was an easier task than it had ever been.
An American Indian wasn't supposed to reach this point. Bender had obliterated the stereotypes, dispelled the misplaced bromides:Indians are lazy. Indians are not competitive. It wouldn't have been difficult to find other men and women defying the warped ideas about what could be done by a man of Bender's pigmentation, though it would have taken some work to find one doing it on such a grand stage. Even American Indian people who had never seen him pitch were inspired by Bender's success. He had effectively turned over the actuarial tables. p.9''
Bender was regularly quoted and written about in magazines such as Baseball Magazine, The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated,American Golf and the various newspapers of the day.
Often, Pratt's school did just that. "Before Carlisle, the public saw Indians as unredeemable savages, a threat to the nation, and an obstruction to progress," Bell said. "After Carlisle, all that changed. Carlisle came to symbolize the possibilities of assimilation; it presented a different sort of Indian education, and it gave the American public a new kind of Indian." p. 31
During Bender's career prominent ballplayers received endorsement deals from companies that made candy bars, chewing tobacco, soft drinks, automobiles, and baseball equipment. Bender received an endorsement deal, too. His profile was seen in newspaper advertisements for a rheumatic remedy. Late in his career, Bender endorsed Mike Martin's Liniment, a rheumatic balm. p. 43
North American was a magazine that reported on Bender's health. p. 45
As a baseball player he downplayed his racial identity while he was forced to become accustomed to the characterizations in the press. He was regularly described as the "grim Chippewa chief", the "artful aborigine" and "the Carlisled son of the forest". p. 60
The point of the above being that people cheered for a man who was regularly pointed out to be a Native American.
Pratt placed Carlisle students in white homes as a way to end prejudice-both ways. p. 69'
The number of people who housed Carlisle students or hired them would certainly spread different ideas about the Indians as a whole.
Bender continued to have a lot of influence by playing in the minor leagues, then coaching with the Athletics into the 50s. In 1954 Bender was put in the Hall of Fame. Thus from 1905 through the mid fifties a Native American was often in the public eye as one of the premier players in a popular sport.
The 1911 World Series was hugely popular and featured Chief Bender against Chief Meyers. The 1911 Series was noteworthy in some quarters because the game's two greatest American Indian players were squaring off against each other. p. 167
After the Series Bender, along with several other baseball players such as Christy Mathewson were in the movie The Baseball Bug which featured Bender as a major plot point.
No comments:
Post a Comment