Talkin’ Baseball – Few Will Remember Bing Miller and Chief Bender

Talkin’ Baseball

FEW WILL REMEMBER BING Miller AND CHIEF BENDER

One is on the Phillies Wall of Fame,

The Other is in the Baseball Hall of Fame

By Jack Coll

8-30-23

     As Major League Baseball streaks toward the 2023 September playoff run  it’s good to be a Philadelphia Phillies fan as the team aligns itself for a playoff position for the second year in a row.

     As I continue to plow through my Conshohocken files, every once in a while, I run across minor tid-bits that interest me in a small way and as a life-long Phillies fan I came across a file that had a number of Phillies tid-bits of interest and thought I’d share two of the notes in the file.

     The two notes I ran across and chose to share pertain to Charles Albert “Chief” Bender, a pitcher for both the Philadelphia A’s, and the Philadelphia Phillies and  Edmund John “Bing” Miller who had two stints with the Philadelphia Phillies, not to mention the Philadelphia A’s, Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns and the Boston Red Sox.

     Before I get to the Conshohocken connection, I thought I’d share a little bit of information about these two baseball players.

     Bing Miller was born In Vinton, Iowa on August 30, 1894 and passed away on May 7, 1966 at the age of 71.  His baseball career spanned 16 years playing right field for the Washington Senators as a rookie in 1921 at the age of 26. The following year he was traded to Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s where he played from 1922-1926.  He went to the St. Louis Browns for the 1926 and 1927 seasons before coming back to the A’s from 1928-1934 where he then finished his career in Boston playing for the Red sox in 1935 and 1936.

     Miller went on to coach in the American League for 17 years working with the Red Sox in 1937, onto the Detroit Tigers from 1938-1941, the Chicago White Sox from 1942-1949 and finally back to the Philadelphia A’s from 1950-1953.

     During his sixteen-year playing career Miller played in 1,800 games, accumulating 1,934 hits in 6,212 at bats for a .311 career batting average along with 946 runs, 389 doubles, 96 triples, 116 home runs, 993 runs batted in, 127 stolen bases, 383 bases on balls, .359 on base percentage and .461 slugging percentage.  He batted .258 with 17 hits and 18 World series games from 1929-1931.

      Miller was a two-time World Series Champion in 1929, and 1930 with the Philadelphia “A’s”.

     Charles Albert “Chief” Bender was a professional baseball player from 1903-1925 who pitched for four major league teams including the Philadelphia Athletics from 1903-1914, then went to Baltimore to play with the Terrapins for the 1915 season.  (The Terrapins only lasted two seasons in the professional ranks.) Bender then played for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1916, and 1917 before playing for the Chicago White Sox until 1925.  He played on three World Series Championship Teams with the “A’s” in 1910, 1911 and 1913.  Bender tied a record by pitching three complete games in a single World Series.  He finished his career with a 212–127-win loss record for a .625 winning percentage and a career 2.46 earned run average. 

     Bender was born in Crow Wing County, Minnesota as a member of the Ojibwe tribe.  As a child he was named Mandowescence, which might translate into English as “Little Spirit Animal.”  His family had 160 acres on the White Earth Indian Reservation near Bemidji, Minnesota.  His father taught him to farm on the reservation.  He graduated from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School located in Carlisle Pennsylvania before attending Dickinson College.    

     The Carlisle Indian Industrial School located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania was founded in 1879 and closed in 1918.  During the 39 years the school was in operation it turned out a tremendous amount of world class athletes including Tsokahouri “Louis” Tewanima who became an Olympian runner who pulled in a Bronze medal in July 1908 in London, and a Silver medal in running in Stockholm in 1912.  Then there was Jim Thorpe who also starred in the 1912 Olympics and went on to play professional football. 

    There were two future Hall of Fame football players, Gus Welch and Joe Guyon who went on to play at Georgia Tech and played on the 1927 Championship New York Giants Football team playing along side of Conshohocken’s own Jack McBride.

     Chief Bender was in good company along with all these other stand-out Carlisle Indian athletes and it was no surprise when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame located in Cooperstown, New York in 1953.

     Bender not only pitched but was often used as a pinch hitter, he also played in the outfield and infield over the years.  Bender was also an accomplished sign-stealer who when he wasn’t pitching was often used by Connie Mack as a third base coach.  Ty Cobb noted that Bender was “The most intelligent pitcher” that he ever faced.

     When pitching Bender used a pitch that was half fastball and half curve.  It had no name at the time but much later the pitch became known as a SLIDER.  A number of baseball historians believed that Bender was the first pitcher to throw the slider.

     Following Bender’s playing career, he went on to manage and coach in the minor leagues for a number of years.  He was offered opportunities to return to the major leagues as a player but enjoyed managing and earned more money in the minors than he was earning as a major league player.  Bender managed the Richmond team in the Virginia League in 1919 and dominated the league as a pitcher, winning 29 games against two defeats that year.

     Bender managed the Eastern team of the Independent House of David in the 1930’s, coached in the Wilmington League in the 1940’s and was associated as a coach with the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, New York Giants and Philadelphia Athletics as a coach and scout.  At the age of 61 Bender began pitching batting practice to the Athletics and years later was the teams pitching coach and credited with the success of Bobby Shantz who became the American Leagues Most Valuable Player in 1952.

     In Bender’s later years he remained close friends with the Athletics coach Bing Miller.  When Bender was in ill health Miller would bring him a container of ice cream nearly every day.  Bender was hospitalized in Philadelphia in April of 1954.  He died there on May 22, 1954 of prostate cancer.  While he was in the hospital, he sent his wife Marie to Shibe Park for each and every home game so that she could report back to him on the teams pitching. 

     Off the field in his later years Bender enjoyed trap shooting, bowling and golf.  He worked in sporting goods at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia during his early playing days and later opened his own store, Bender’s Sporting Goods.

      A few of Bender’s other hobbies included hunting and fishing. He loved gardening, playing billiards and painting oil landscapes.  He also dabbled as a consultant in the diamond and textile trades which leads us to Conshohocken.

     Chief Bender had a retail store on lower Fayette Street for a couple of years where he sold diamonds and fine jewelry.  I can’t give you an address or the number of years he was in business in Conshohocken but I do have a record of him doing business in Conshohocken on Lower Fayette Street.  Bender is buried in Roslyn Pa.

     Bing Miller played a number of baseball games in Spring Mill with the rest of Connie Mack’s  Philadelphia A’s at the old Santa Maria Country Club, (formerly the Spring Mill Country Club)  Throughout the 1920’s the Blue Laws were in effect in the city of Philadelphia so on Sunday’s during this time Mack would load the players on a train in Philadelphia and take them to Spring Mill where they would play College teams and other local teams. 

     It was a great time for Conshohocken residents and the games would draw large crowds of locals,  remember,  there was no televisions in the 1920’s to broadcast the games and all of the games were afternoon games because there were no night-lights at the field.  So, when the Phillies or A’s played their games most fans were at work at the steel mills or other places and could never see the games or players live.  The only thing they had was the newspapers where their baseball hero’s would shine for their exploits during a number of championship seasons during the 1920’s.

     Residents would go to the field and see in person the likes of Jimmy Dykes, Mickey Cochran, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx and guys like Lamar, Halp, and Ragwell. And then there was Bing Miller, in all his glory and in all his youth. 

     As mentioned, Miller coached in the American League for 17 years after his playing career ended.  On May 7, 1966, Miller was injured in an automobile accident while driving home after attending a game at Connie Mack Stadium between the Phillies and Pirates.  He was taken to Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, and despite strong efforts from the hospital staff Miller passed away just six hours after the accident.  Bing Miller is buried at Calvary Cemetery in West Conshohocken.

     Both Miller and Bender, two great ball players who had outstanding careers in the sport of baseball both touched Conshohocken in a very small way.  Miller who played in Spring Mill and is buried in West Conshohocken, and Bender who operated a jewelry store on Fayette Street for a short time.

     It’s the middle of summer 2023, and all Phillies fans are wishing and hoping for a return trip to the World Series.  GO PHILLIES!!!!

     As I continue to clean-up my files, I’ll continue to forward these little tid-bit stories, that both you and I might find interesting.