Billy Sunday Finds Home
Base
Billy Sunday
The Chicago White Stocking's big right fielder wobbled out of a Chicago tavern. With him were five of his buddies. "Where to now?" one stammered, as Bill Sunday lurched to a stop on Van Buren Street.
Pointing to a band of street musicians, Bill said, "Let's listen to the music." The fact that his name was a household word among Chicago sports lovers did not keep him from plopping down right then on the curbstone of the busy street.
For some time, Sunday and his teammates listened to the music. Sunday was the most interested, for the musicians were playing hymns he had heard his mother sing in their log cabin back in Iowa.
Then the music stopped. "We are from the Pacific Garden Mission," Harry Monroe, the group's spokesman said. "The service begins in a few minutes. Come with us, and enjoy the singing and preaching."
"Hey, Bill, what's going on there?" His teammates began to jeer and snicker. One jostled him in the ribs. But something was happening. Bill Sunday's bleary eyes were beginning to clear.
"Come hear how drunkards become sober and harlots pure," Harry Monroe was saying. "Come. Come." And with that the band launched into another hymn,
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keeping cadence with their feet as they marched off toward the famous mission.
Bill Sunday jumped to his feet. "I'm going to Jesus Christ, boys," he said with jaw set. "Come with me if you'd like."
As Sunday strode away, four of his teammates guffawed loudly. One of them did not laugh. Instead, he slapped Bill on the shoulder. "More power to you, boy."
Bill Sunday went to the mission that night. He listened, but he made no definite decision other than to return. To his surprise, most of his teammates were sympathetic when he turned up for practice the next day. He went back to the mission again and again. Finally one night in conversation with Mrs. Clarke, wife of the mission's founder, Bill Sunday said yes to Christ.
That was the year 1886. Sunday continued with the White Stockings team, only instead of playing ball on Sundays, he spoke to boys at the YMCA in the city where his team was playing. The hero-worshiping youngsters thronged to hear the man who was fast becoming a legendary base stealer in baseball. At that time he was known as the "fastest man in the leagues," being able to circle the bases in fourteen seconds.
Five years after Sunday's conversion, the Chicago club released him at his insistence. The Cincinnati team immediately offered him $500 a month. But Sunday took a job at the Chicago "Y" as an assistant secretary in the religious department. His salary was only $83.33 per month, on which he had to support his wife, daughter, and invalid brother. To make ends meet, he walked to work and back each day, had his
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old clothes dyed to appear new, and wore a celluloid collar.
But a few years later, Bill Sunday, better known as "Billy," became a world-famous evangelist. In one ten week series of meetings in New York, 98,264 people "hit the sawdust trail" to grip the big athlete's hand and say yes to Christ.
When the baseball evangelist died in 1935, the number of converts from his ministry had swelled to an estimated one million, with another one hundred million who had heard him preach.
