Before Billy Graham, There Was Billy Sunday

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is our American stories.
One hundred years ago, Billy Sunday was among the most
famous and influential men in America. Here to share another
story is Robert Morgan, who was the author of one
hundred Bible verses that made America defining moments that shaped
our enduring foundation of faith. Let’s take a listen.Speaker 2 (00:32):
His name was Billy, and he was an evangelist, But
he wasn’t Billy Graham. Before Billy Graham, there was Billy Sunday.
This man was born in eighteen sixty two outside Ames, Iowa,
and a little log cabin with rough boards for a floor.
It was during the Civil War, and Billy never saw
nor knew his father, the elder Sunday, William, was a(00:56):
contractor and brickmason. He enlisted in the Union Army, and
while fording a river, he became wet to the skin,
contracted a severe cold, and died from pneumonia during the war.
He was buried at Camp Patterson and Missouri. The young widow,
Mary tried to raise her new baby and his older

(01:16):
brother ed, but it was a hard prairie life. Billy
grew up milking cows, cutting wood, building fences, and riding horses.
Despite her best efforts, missus Sunday couldn’t provide for her boys,
and at length she sent them to the soldier’s orphans
home at Glenwood, Iowa. Billy later recalled how she took

(01:39):
them to the train station, her eyes red with tears,
and put them on the train without even being able
to give them enough money for the ticket. A kind
railroad man, touched by their story, let them ride for free.
When Billy was fourteen, he went with his brother Ed
to live with their grandfather back near Ames. Shortly afterward,

(02:01):
Billy was able to enroll in high school. He proved
to be a sensational athlete. His speed as a runner
was incredible, and he became known as one of the
few people in the country who could run one hundred
yards and ten seconds. After graduating from high school, Billy
moved to another town and joined the local baseball team.

(02:23):
He excelled as a player and caught the attention of
Cap Anson, also from Iowa, who had been a famous
baseball player with the Chicago White Stockings today known as
the Chicago Cubs, and some persuaded Billy to move to Chicago.
And join the team, and just like that, Billy Sunday

(02:44):
became a professional baseball player. His speed and athleticism, along
with his outgoing and friendly personality, made him a celebrity
wherever he went. He specialized in stealing bases, with ninety
four steals in just one season.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
He was the first man to circle the basis in
fourteen seconds from a standing start. He stole ninety six
bases in one season, which was a record, second only
to Ty Cobbs in ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
One day, he was strolling around the Chicago streets with
some of his baseball friends, he saw a small crowd
gathered in an empty lot at the corner of State
and Van Buren Streets. It was an outdoor e angelistic rally.
Billy and his friend stopped to listen and soon sat
down on the curb and heard every word of the sermon.

(03:35):
He did the same for several nights in a row.
The Pacific Garden Mission had been started by Colonel George
Clark and his wife Sarah. It was Sarah who sat
down with him, talked with them like a mother, and
led him to confess Jesus Christ as his savior. Not
long after his conversion, Billy suffered an injury while sliding

(03:57):
into base. He always slid head first, but this time
something went wrong and he hurt his knee. When the
Chicago White Stockings took a promotional trip around the world,
Billy was advised by his doctor to stay home, and
soon he was working actively in a nearby Presbyterian church.
He also joined the YMCA, which at that time was

(04:21):
focused on training young men in the Bible. Billy learned
everything that he could. One Sunday, he was asked to
teach a class of young men. The guys in the
class wanted to talk to him about his baseball career. Finally,
he promised to meet with him the next day to
talk about baseball if he could only teach them the
Bible during the class period that day. Well, that was

(04:44):
the beginning. For several years, Billy played professional baseball in Chicago,
and then in Pittsburgh and finally for the Philadelphia Phillies,
all the while teaching the Bible and giving religious talks
at YMCA’s and every city where the team traveled. Before long,
pastors began asking him to speak from their pulpits at

(05:05):
Sunday services. One newspaper said it is something of a
novelty to see a professional ballplayer get up in the
pulpit and forgetting base hits, home runs, brilliant catches, and
the roar of the crowd. For a while expound on
the great doctrines of Christ in such a forcible manner
as to almost bring tears to the eyes of over

(05:28):
fifteen hundred people. Along the way, Billy met a young
woman named Helen Thompson. She was a Sunday school teacher.
Her father, too, had been a Union soldier in the
Civil War and had been wounded at Shiloh. Billy was
twenty four years old when they met, and they were
married in eighteen eighty eight. Billy retired from baseball in

(05:51):
eighteen ninety one to engage in Christian work, and he
became an assistant one of the best known evangelists of
the day, doctor J. Wilburt Chapman. This went on for
three years until Chapman accepted the invitation of a church
to become its pastor. Well that preyed up Billy to
begin conducting his own campaigns and crusades, mostly in Iowa.

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At first, these meetings were held in large churches or auditoriums,
but these proved too small for the numbers. But even
the largest tents were too small, so the advanced teams
began building special tabernacles that could hold enormous crowds. One
reporter said, you are in the largest room you ever saw,

(06:37):
and the whole scene is glorious with electric light and bunting.
The building you have entered will seat about ten thousand,
and there is standing room for two or three thousand more. Well,
Billy Sunday was perhaps the most athletic preacher who ever lived.
He ran back and forth across the platform, jumped onto chairs,

(06:57):
pounded the pulpit, kicked the pulpit, shook his fist, leaped
into the air, and travelent least a mild per message
around the stage. Sometimes he smashed chairs across the pulpit,
and then suddenly he would lean over the desk, look
exhausted at his suit, wet with perspiration, and say, you

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know that God has spoken to you. You know that
without Christ you are lost, and that with Him you
are saved. You know your duty and your privilege. And now,
without another word from me, and before anyone can have
a chance to say anything to you, how many of
you will settle the great question without the delay of
another minute, by coming forward to take me by the hand,

(07:42):
and by so doing confess and accept Jesus Christ is
your personal Savior, who will come. From all over the
tabernacle people would come forward in large numbers to give
their lives to Christ.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I was brought to Christ through the preaching of the
evangelist Billy Sunday in the city of Boston. I was
twenty four years of age at the time and utterly
indifferent to the things of God, an agnostic, I think,
at least I was read in the literature of agnosticism
and felt that I could answer most of the propositions

(08:17):
that preachers put before me concerning my responsibility to God.
The church didn’t have much for me, it seemed always.
I felt the preacher was saying, be good, be good,
and there were two things wrong with that. One was
that I knew I couldn’t be good if I wanted to,
and the other was I didn’t want to be good
in the first place. But this man told me something else.

(08:42):
Billy Sunday said I was a sinner and that I
needed Christ. I found something so earnest about the man
that I couldn’t help but listen intently to what he
had to say. As I recall, I didn’t believe a
word he was saying, but was impressed with the fact
that he believed everything that he should.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
And you’ve been listening to Robert Morgan, author of one
hundred Bible verses that made America, and you’re hearing the
story of Billy Sunday. He never really knew. His father
lost him in the Civil War in Ammonia. His mom
couldn’t handle raising the kids off. He was sent to
various homes and then ultimately to family. While in high school,

(09:22):
he excelled as an athlete as a baseball player and
would join the team in Chicago, the professional team that
would become the Chicago Cubs, and an a space dealer.
He was ninety six in a season. Only Ty Cobb
had more. What drew him to the Lord was an
evangelical rally. He went nights in a row, then gave

(09:42):
his life to the Lord, and then ultimately, well he
just started to preach. When we come back more of
the remarkable story of Billy Sunday, the Billy Graham of
his day. Here on our American Stories, and we continue

(10:09):
with our American stories and the story of Billy Sunday.
Let’s pick up where we last left off with Robert Morgan,
author of one hundred Bible verses, that made America.

Speaker 4 (10:21):
America needs to be taken down a God’s bath house
on the hose turned on her, and the time isn’t
far distant from the wheels of God’s judgment are going
to go sweeping through this old God hating world. And
I want to take a pledge in this audience to
join me in a pledge that you will never rest
until us old God hating Christ, hating whiskey, soap, sabbath breaking, blaspheming,

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infinite bootlegging, old world is bound to the cross of
Jesus Christ by the golden chains of love.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Billy Sunday’s mother, who had so tearfully put her sons
on the train for the orphanage years before, lived long
enough to see her son preaching to the great crowds.
She had a special seat on the platform in many
of his great meetings. The floors of the tabernacle were
sawdust and the isles were sawdust. That gave rise to

(11:11):
a famous phrase that developed from the Billy Sunday crusades
hitting the sawdust trail. It meant going forward to be saved.
When a Billy’s Sunday campaign came to town, it was a
sensational event. One newspaper said about the meeting in that
particular town. Every walk of life was influenced. It couldnot

(11:34):
be resisted. It went into every office, every shop, every home,
every street. It claimed converts in every profession. The police
of the city were captured. Every policeman placed on duty
at the tabernacle hit the sawdust trail. The chief himself,
seated on the platform, made a hearty and open confession

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of Christ. Lawyers, physicians, merchants, artisans of every description all
added their quota to the harvest of the evangelist. The
newspaper article went on to say, men and women were
carried off their feet. Men who had never listened to
a religious appeal, surrendered to the call of Christ. Many

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who had hated evangelism and feared the Gospel were caught
in the throes of decision. The total number of converts
during the campaign was eighteen thousand, one hundred and forty nine.
There were ninety five tabernacle meetings held, and the aggregate
attendance was nearly a million people. Everywhere Billy Sunday went

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resulted in the town or city being changed. The Ohio
State Journal said about the story and statistics of one
Ohio city, and the opinion of men who have studied
the campaigns of great revivalists, this record surpasses all figures
thus far compiled in the United States and abroad, and

(12:59):
maybe taken as the greatest evangelistic demonstration of modern times.
For more than seven weeks, hundreds of businessmen neglected their
private affairs for an equal period. Social engagements were disregarded
or sidetracked. For that length of time. Sixty churches closed
their doors so people could attend the meetings, and the

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pastors devoted most of their time to advancing the work
of the campaign. And during all those days, the Reverend
Billy Sunday, the Baseball of angelists, talked and prayed, sweated
and prahupped about the platform, besought and entreated with sinners,
played with scalding invective every sort of wickedness, and endeared

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himself personally to the multitudes who either had been openly
or covertly antagonistic. And the spell of his oratory and
the persuasive influence of his coworkers, all manner of men
were made to take a new view of life. City
and county officials, saloon keepers and professors, society women and

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shop girls, school children and avowed agnostics stood up and
said publicly, I accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior.
When Sunday held a campaign in Los Angeles, he met
Charlie Chaplin, The famous actor later said, I was swept
off my feet. I had known I was to meet him,

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and had tried to think of some nice things to say,
but I just could not talk. I had a bad
attack of stage fright. He put his arm around my shoulder,
and then I felt sure he was going to ask
me about my soul, but he did not. He asked
me to join the family in his dressing room. I
followed him in, still dazed. There was nothing artificial about

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the man or his family. I did not think of
him then as Reverend mister Sunday just plain Billy well
In all, Billy preached for about forty years and held
more than three hundred campaigns or crusades. He was seen
and heard by an estimated one hundred million people, more

(15:13):
than any other person in history up to that point.
It’s estimated he led over a million people to place
their faith in Christ. In spite of that, people sometimes
look back and criticized Billy Sunday for his theatrics, for
the large love offerings he received at the end of
each meeting, and for his alleged neglect of his children.

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Billy and Helen had three sons and a daughter, each
of whom suffered tragedy. Helen Sunday died of pneumonia in
nineteen thirty two. George was arrested for drunkenness and auto
theft before he committed suicide in nineteen thirty three. After
Billy Sunday’s death in nineteen thirty five, Billy Junior died
in an automobile crash, and Paul, who became a test pilot,

(16:00):
died in an airplane crash in nineteen forty four. After
World War One, Billy’s popularity waned and his health declined.
Their daughter’s death devastated him, and not long afterward, as
he was preaching, Helen saw that something was wrong with him.
She slipped out of the crowd into the church office
and told one of his associates to go onto the

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platform and help him. The man said, what will I do?
Moss Sunday said, I don’t know, but something is wrong.
You’ll just have to figure it out yourself. You’ll just
have to let the Lord lead you in what to do.
The man went on to the platform and put his
hand on Billy’s shoulder. He said, Voss, you’re not feeling

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very well. Just now, let me finish the sermon for you.
He led Billy to a side door and a doctor
was waiting there. Billy had suffered a heart attack. After
a long recovery and with invitations coming from all over
the country, Billy tried to preach again, but he had
another heart attacking Chattanooga. After another recovery, he accepted yet

(17:07):
another invitation to preach a few days later. Billy was
so weak he was sitting in a chair with a
blanket around his knees. He felt like eating some rice
crispies and cold milk. In a few minutes, he called out, Nell,
come quick, I’ve got an awful pain. He said. It
was running across his chest. They put an ice bag

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on his chest and a hot water bottle on his feet.
He relaxed, and Nell went over to the desk to
write some letters. He said, I’m getting dizzy, Ma, and
he was gone. It was November sixth, nineteen thirty five.
Billy Sunday was seventy two years old. But Billy’s influences

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lived long after him, and it paved the way for
that other famous Billy, Billy Graham.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
There’s not a person here that could live the Christian
life except accept Rice live it through you an.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Inn how odd The two billies spanned the twentieth century
bringing the Gospels to the masses, Billy Sunday in the
early days and Billy Graham for the rest of the century.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Robert Morgan who’s the author of one hundred Bible verses
that made America and what a story he told here.
The two billies that would do evangelical crusades throughout the
world and throughout the twentieth century. Without Billy Sunday, more

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than likely there may not have been a Billy Graham.
These two guys were the bookends of this remarkable century.
Billy Sunday’s campaigns when they came to town changed the town.
Everybody came skeptics, atheist, agnostics and believe alike. Lawyers, doctors, merchants,
men and women carried off their feet. Hundreds of millions witnessed,

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and one million or more gave their lives to Christ
as a result. And then the death bioheart attack. But
what a life lived, the life of Billy Sunday, the
baseball evangelist who led the way for Billy Graham. Here
on our American Stories