A Base-Ball "Star"
Don't get chesty over success.--BILLY SUNDAY.
Sometimes the preacher tells his people what a great journalist he
might have been, or what a successful business man, had he not entered
the ministry; but usually his hearers never would have suspected it if
he had not told them. Billy Sunday's eminence as a baseball player is
not a shadow cast backward from his present pre-eminence. His success
as a preacher has gained luster from his distinction as a baseball
player, while his fame as a baseball player has been kept alive by his
work as an evangelist.
All the world of baseball enthusiasts, a generation ago, knew Billy
Sunday, the speediest base-runner and the most daring base-stealer in
the whole fraternity. Wherever he goes today veteran devotees of the
national game recall times they saw him play; and sporting periodicals
and sporting pages of newspapers have been filled with reminiscences
from baseball "fans," of the triumphs of the evangelist on the diamond.
A side light on the reality of his religion while engaged in
professional baseball is thrown by the fact that sporting writers
always speak of him with pride and loyalty, and his old baseball
associates who still survive, go frequently to hear him preach. The
baseball world thinks that he reflects distinction on the game.
Now baseball in Marshalltown and baseball in Chicago had not exactly
the same standards. The recruit had to be drilled. He struck out the
first thirteen times he went to bat. He never became a superior batter,
but he could always throw straight and hard. At first he was inclined
to take too many chances and his judgment was rather unsafe. One
baseball writer has said that "Sunday probably caused more wide throws
than any other player the game has ever known, because of his specialty
of going down to first like a streak of greased electricity. When he
hit the ball infielders yelled 'hurry it up.' The result was that they
often threw them away." He was the acknowledged champion sprinter of
the National League. This once led to a match race with Arlie Latham,
who held like honors in the American League. Sunday won by fifteen feet.
[Illustration: HIS SLIDES WERE ADVENTURES BELOVED OF THE "FANS"]
Sunday was the sort of figure the bleachers liked. He was always
eager--sometimes too eager--to "take a chance." What was a one-base hit
for another man was usually good for two bases for him. His slides and
stolen bases were adventures beloved of the "fans"--the spice of the
game. He also was apt in retort to the comments from the bleachers, but
always good-natured. The crowds liked him, even as did his team mates.
Sunday was a man's man, and so continues to this day. His tabernacle
audiences resemble baseball crowds in the proportion of men present,
more nearly than any other meetings of a religious nature that are
regularly being held. Sunday spent five years on the old Chicago
team, mostly playing right or center field. He was the first man in
the history of baseball to circle the bases in fourteen seconds. He
could run a hundred yards from a standing start in ten seconds flat.
Speed had always been his one distinction. As a lad of thirteen, in
the Fourth of July games at Ames, he won a prize of three dollars in a
foot-race, a feat which he recalls with pleasure.
Speed is a phase of baseball that, being clear to all eyes, appeals to
the bleachers. So it came about that Sunday was soon a baseball "hero,"
analogous to "Ty" Cobb or "Home-Run" Baker, or Christy Mathewson of
our own day. He himself tells the story of one famous play, on the day
after his conversion:
"That afternoon we played the old Detroit club. We were neck and neck
for the championship. That club had Thompson, Richardson, Rowe, Dunlap,
Hanlon and Bennett, and they could play ball.
"I was playing right field. Mike Kelly was catching and John G.
Clarkson was pitching. He was as fine a pitcher as ever crawled into
a uniform. There are some pitchers today, O'Toole, Bender, Wood,
Mathewson, Johnson, Marquard, but I do not believe any one of them
stood in the class with Clarkson.
"Cigarettes put him on the bum. When he'd taken a bath the water would
be stained with nicotine.
"We had two men out and they had a man on second and one on third and
Bennett, their old catcher, was at bat. Charley had three balls and two
strikes on him. Charley couldn't hit a high ball: but he could kill
them when they went about his knee.
"I hollered to Clarkson and said: 'One more and we got 'em.'
"You know every pitcher puts a hole in the ground where he puts his
foot when he is pitching. John stuck his foot in the hole and he went
clean to the ground. Oh, he could make 'em dance. He could throw
overhanded, and the ball would go down and up like that. He is the only
man on earth I have seen do that. That ball would go by so fast that
the batter could feel the thermometer drop two degrees as she whizzed
by. John went clean down, and as he went to throw the ball his right
foot slipped and the ball went low instead of high.
"I saw Charley swing hard and heard the bat hit the ball with a
terrific boom. Bennett had smashed the ball on the nose. I saw the
ball rise in the air and knew that it was going clear over my head.
"I could judge within ten feet of where the ball would light. I turned
my back to the ball and ran.
"The field was crowded with people and I yelled, 'Stand back!' and that
crowd opened as the Red Sea opened for the rod of Moses. I ran on, and
as I ran I made a prayer; it wasn't theological, either, I tell you
that. I said, 'God, if you ever helped mortal man, help me to get that
ball, and you haven't very much time to make up your mind, either.' I
ran and jumped over the bench and stopped.
"I thought I was close enough to catch it. I looked back and saw it was
going over my head and I jumped and shoved out my left hand and the
ball hit it and stuck. At the rate I was going the momentum carried
me on and I fell under the feet of a team of horses. I jumped up with
the ball in my hand. Up came Tom Johnson. Tom used to be mayor of
Cleveland. He's dead now.
"'Here is $10, Bill. Buy yourself the best hat in Chicago. That catch
won me $1,500. Tomorrow go and buy yourself the best suit of clothes
you can find in Chicago.'
"An old Methodist minister said to me a few years ago, 'Why, William,
you didn't take the $10, did you?' I said, 'You bet your life I did.'"
After his five years with the Chicago baseball team, Sunday played upon
the Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia teams, his prestige so growing with
the years that after he had been eight years in baseball, he declined a
contract at five hundred dollars a month, in order to enter Christian
work.
For most of his baseball career Sunday was an out-and-out Christian.
He had been converted in 1887, after four years of membership on the
Chicago team. He had worked at his religion; his team mates knew his
Christianity for the real thing. On Sundays, because of his eminence
as a baseball player, he was in great demand for Y. M. C. A. talks.
The sporting papers all alluded frequently to his religious interests
and activities. Because of his Christian scruples he refused to play
baseball on Sunday. During the four years of his experience as a
Christian member of the baseball profession it might have been clear to
anybody who cared to study the situation carefully that the young man's
interest in religion was steadily deepening and that he was headed
toward some form of avowedly Christian service.
[Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY IN NATIONAL LEAGUE UNIFORM.]
"I had a three-year contract with Philadelphia. I said to God, 'Now if
you want me to quit playing ball and go into evangelistic work, then
you get me my release,' and so I left it with God to get my release
before the 25th day of March and would take that as an evidence that he
wanted me to quit playing ball.
"On the 17th day of March, St. Patrick's day--I shall never forget
it--I was leading a meeting and received a letter from Colonel Rogers,
president of the Philadelphia club, stating I could have my release.
"In came Jim Hart, of the Cincinnati team, and up on the platform and
pulled out a contract for $3,500. A player only plays seven months, and
he threw the check down for $500, the first month's salary in advance.
He said, 'Bill, sign up!' But I said, 'No!' I told him that I told God
if he wanted me to quit playing ball to get my release before the 25th
day of March and I would quit.
"There I was up against it. I went around to some of my friends and
some said, 'Take it!' Others said, 'Stick to your promise.' I asked my
father-in-law about it, and he said, 'You are a blank fool if you don't
take it.' I went home and went to bed, but could not sleep, and prayed
that night until five o'clock, when I seemed to get the thing straight
and said, 'No, sir, I will not do it.'
"I went to work for the Y. M. C. A. and had a very hard time of it. It
was during those hard times that I hardly had enough to pay my house
rent, but I stuck to my promise."
It was in March of 1891 that Sunday made the decision which marked
the parting of the ways for him. He abandoned baseball forever as a
profession, although not as an interest, and entered upon definite
religious work. He accepted a position in the Chicago Y. M. C. A. as a
subordinate secretary at $83.33 per month--and sometimes this was six
months overdue.
The stuff of which the young man's moral character was made is revealed
by the fact that he deliberately rejected a $500-a-month baseball
contract in order to serve Christ at a personal sacrifice. This
incident reveals the real temper of Sunday, and is to be borne in mind
when discussion is raised concerning the large offerings which are made
to him now in his successful evangelistic work. That act was not the
deed of a money-loving man. If it does not spell consecration, it is
difficult to define what it does mean.
Doubtless there were many who thought this ending of a conspicuous
baseball career an anti-climax, even as the flight of Moses into the
wilderness of Sinai apparently spelled defeat. Out of such defeats and
sacrifices as these grow the victories that best serve the world and
most honor God.