Inventing The Slider

For nearly 50 years, Charles Albert Bender was the only Minnesota-born baseball player inducted into the Hall of Fame, in part for inventing the slider, a powerful pitch for striking out batters. Bender’s rise to fame is poignant. He was an Ojibwe, born on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and later forced to live at a boarding school in Pennsylvania. Listen to MN90 producer Marisa Helms’ story about the inspirational life of Charles Albert Bender.