Bendable Bender: 1911 T201 Mecca Double Folder

I recently was chatting with the proprietor of Nomo's Sushi Platter about the 1961 Golden Press set. He's recently picked up the Hank Greenberg from the set, and I own the Charles Bender.  I was going to post about the Bender, but came across ANOTHER Bender that's one of my all-time favorites, the 1911 T201 Double Folder.

The old-school feel of the portrait is spectacular. I appreciate the recent iterations of Topps 206 have tried to replicate this, but they come up far short compared to the real thing. You don't need Clayton Kershaw in front of turn of the century insane asylums. A vintage feel is all about the the baroque feel of Bender's posture here, the kind of self-contradictory motions described by Eugenio d'Ors that you'd expect to see exhibited by the saints of a European cathedral. Bender's torso is in full follow-through, twisting above his lower body that betrays almost no movement save for a left foot that seems to shift away from the throw. You cannot throw a baseball as represented here, period. The posture is impossible the way the ballpark is improbably spacious, the way the wine-bottle-shaped shadow at his feet is simply not something that could ever exist. 

Then there's the back. I love how they include Bender's batting stats along with his pitching stats. When was the last time you saw that? At any rate, by all accounts he was a decent hitter. 

What really makes the card cool, though is this:

You flip the card over and you get Rube Oldring, a man who was not only Bender's teammate but also his roommate on the road. As with Bender you get the same feel here. Oldring is somewhere lost in space, in a cow field perhaps, and unnaturally bent over like he's the hunchback of Notre Dame. He's supposed to fit on the card, sure, but he appears to be a human trying to enter the home of a hobbit, not someone preparing to field ground balls.

Anyway, a little vintage on a Friday. Golden Press is coming, just not yet. Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Double Duty: Bender and Oldring 1911 T201 Mecca Double Folder

I picked this card up about a year ago. It's an awesome twofer of HOFer and CCC favorite Charles Bender and the less known Rube Oldring.

First the whole card with Bender:

Overall it's a pretty classy shot of Bender at, I'm guessing, an early version of Shibe Park. Being a guy who digs on some vintage, I'm often disappointed by how current brands (ahem, Topps) will take something like this and go waaay crazy with it (T206, I'm looking at you!). Cards from the actual era were pretty straightforward and not all all self-conscious like the C. Kershaw in The Shining-type cards you pull nowadays.

Anyway, Oldring and the stats are on the back.

Sure enough, if you fold Oldring over he lines up nicely with Bender's legs in kind of a fielding pose. 

The coolest thing is that, according to a Bender bio I read, the two were roomies back in the day. When was the last time two baseball roomies were on the same card? Anyone else know of any cases?

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Charles Bender is Money

My new car needs new engine. Bummer. It's under warranty (thank you dear, sweet Lord) so hopefully things will turn out.

In other news, I bring you my small Charles Albert Bender (1903-1917, 1925), AKA "Chief," collection. Connie Mack referred to Bender as the best "Money Pitcher" he'd ever had, as in if he had a single game to win, he'd want Bender on the mound. Those were some of baseball's All-Time great teams, with players like Frank "Home Run" Baker, "Gettysburg" Eddie Plank, and "Rube" Waddell, just to limit myself to naming a few players. And Mack felt Bender was his best pitcher.

Bender appeared in 5 World Series with Mack's A's, compiling pretty impressive stats: 6-4 with a 2.44 ERA. The ERA would be a lot lower save for the infamous 1914 game against the miracle Boston Braves, in which he gave up 8 hits and 6 earned runs in 5 1/3 innings. He and other A's players were suspected of negotiating contracts to jump to the startup, rebel Federal League before the series began, and so many felt he and other A's players conspired to throw the series, whether under the influence of gamblers or due to plain indifference. Both of the great recent Bender bios, Chief Bender's Burden and Money Pitcher, offer excellent portraits of the moment, but neither offers anything conclusive proof.

Like a lot of pitchers from that era, Bender threw a lot of innings, doing things like starting the opening game of a double-header and relieving the second. Like a lot of them, he often pitched hurt. If there's an argument against the Nolan Ryan, ESPN school of "we used to throw a ton of innings and it had no effect on us," it's to be found in the careers of pitchers like Bender and others, the original old schoolers.

Like I said before, he went on to be a mentor to CCC favorite Bobby Shantz. Bender is often credited with inventing the slider, though he didn't have a name for it.

Bender's story also highlights a lot of the difficulties Native Americans faced at the turn of the century and continue to face today. He was "white enough" to play, but not "white enough" that he escaped being heckled with war whoops when he pitched or, like John Meyers, being dubbed "Chief." Bender, or so the story goes, would respond by calling them "foreigners."

I'll go deeper into these cards another day, but here are my Bender cardboards.

The front of this T205 is great, the back is interesting, but you don't get all the text!

To borrow a phrase from Capt'n Canuck, this card went though the wash with a pocketful of poker chips, but we get the full text. Turns out Bender was also a great hitter, too.

Finally, this T207, not quite as pretty as the T205, but a solid card nonetheless.

Have a great one!

Vintage versus Neo-Vintage Round II: T205 Edition

David Price on the mound, Rays on the TV, things are good.

CC had SBs 50 and 51 last night, giving him five 50+ steal seasons. Showing some power here recently, too. AND today's his birthday, and NO I wouldn't have known if ESPN hadn't announced it.

Gomes is OPSing around .900, but has the night off.

Things are good.

So, among the things to do while I'm waiting for the poor man's Ginter break, pit cards of some of my favorite players against each other. Specifically vintage versus neo-vintage, which is a never ending subject of fascination.

First up: T205 Chas Bender. He'll get several posts in the near future, but here is the front of this HOFer's 205 next to CC's 205 Mini from '02.

Now, there are some subtle differences in design, but what doesn't come through in the scan is how the differences in printing technique effect the overall look. Here are the backs, both Polar Bears: (Crawford just homered!)

If you were wondering, this back belongs to a different T205 Bender I have, as my first copy has a better front but a terrible case of paper loss on the back.

Anyway, I've got my opinions which I'll keep to myself, but which do you folks like better and why?

Bobby Shantz as the original Tim Lincecum

First, I have to apologize to Mr. Shantz for making a reference to his size in the title. I recently finished his 1953 bio The Bobby Shantz Story, and he's pretty adamant about the fact that he doesn't want people to focus on his size because he is, first and foremost, a ballplayer, and a heck of a ballplayer at that. However, the media is constantly talking about the 5' 11'' "Tiny" Tim and how he's overcome his diminutive size to be a dominant force among the big boys. Shantz, by comparison, is 5' 6''. That's right, "Tiny" Tim has about 1/2 a foot on Mr. Shantz, so make of that what you will.

What this post is about is the really awesome player and person that Bobby Shantz is. As a player his finest years were perhaps 1951 and 1952. Playing for the A's in 1952, Shantz went 24-7 with a 2.48 ERA and 1.048 WHIP. He sported a 159 ERA+. Dude was flat out dominant and won the MVP that year pretty handily over second place Allie Reynolds. In the bio he talks about persistent back troubles that nag him in his ascent to the Majors, and I'm guessing that those and other injuries plagued him, limiting his starts over the ensuing years.

Shantz remained a force for the rest of his career. For example, in 1957 he has traded to the Yankis, and he went 11-5 with a 2.45 ERA, and the best ERA+ in the league at 147. In other words, one of the best, most effective pitchers in the league. My dad remembers Shantz pitching for the Yanks in those years, and says he was awesome.

For his career he finished 119-99 with a 3.38 ERA and 119 ERA+. He was also a 3x All-Star and 8x Gold Glove winner.

He's feature prominently in two bios of the A's great and HOFer Charles Albert Bender. Bender was Shantz's pitching coach in 1951, leading up to the phenomenal 1952 season, and was a great mentor and influence. As Bender's health deteriorated in 1954, Shantz wrote him a touching letter, the complete text of which is unfortunately not on-line (lines here).

Since I am a HUGE Bender fan, I decided to write Mr. Shantz and request an auto. I grabbed a '52 Topps from his MVP season and hoped for the best. He sent it back in record time and I am very thankful!

I also sent him a small sheet with a few questions about his career, again hoping for the best. Mr. Shantz came through much bigger than I could have reasonably expected. I asked him for his favorite memory of "Chief" Bender, and he wrote the following:

"Chief Bender and I always went fishing together at West Palm Beach, where we had Spring Training. Chief was a very fine pitching coach and a great fisherman!"

I hope Mr. Shantz doesn't mind my sharing that. At any rate, it was incredible to receive those words from such an amazing player and person who is directly linked to one of my favorite players, Bender. I am also now a HUGE fan of Mr. Shantz. Many thanks, sir! That really made my day.

On a personal note, in-laws are leaving tomorrow and I'll be getting to handing out more overdue "thank you"'s. Have a good one!