John Bender (minors01)

John Charles Bender

• Bats Left
• School Carlisle Indian Industrial School

• Born October 1878 in Crow Wing County, MN USA
• Died September 25, 1911 in Edmonton, AB CAN

BR Minors page

Biographical Information

John Bender was a minor league player; his brother Charles Bender was a Hall of Fame pitcher.

John Bender hit .343 in 29 games for Fargo in 1904. He batted .264 for the 1905 Charleston Sea Gulls and .234 as an outfielder for Charleston and the Augusta Tourists in 1906. He hit .250 for Augusta in 1907 then slumped to .221 in 1908, split between Augusta and the Columbia Gamecocks. On July 19, a drunken Bender stabbed Win Clark with a knife during an altercation over Bender's behavior while drunk aboard a steamboat. He was banned from baseball but returned in 1911 with Charleston, presumably reinstated, hitting .189 in 38 games for Columbia. He then signed with the Edmonton Eskimos and hit .213 in 33 games. He remained in Edmonton after the season ended and died suddenly in an Edmonton cafe; Bender had been diagnosed with heart disease earlier in the year. Some articles later got the facts wrong, claiming Bender died while on the playing field, a myth that continued into two Bill James books. The truth did not reemerge in 2008, when a book about on-field deaths set the record straight.

Source: Western Canada baseball history

Related Sites

• John Bender at the SABR Bio Project