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