Just by luck, the same summer the Marshalltown fire brigade needed a fast man in the worst way for the fire-fighting competition, someone spotted this youngster from the orphanage, who could run like the wind. To show what an exalted honor it was to belong to a fire brigade, the boy joined up even though it meant missing his high school graduation. There were firemen’s tournaments all summer, but the brigade didn’t take full time, even in Iowa, so he hired out to the local undertaker— $3 a week, and enough time off for baseball, which suited him to a T. With him playing outfield, Marshalltown won the state baseball championship in 1883, and the great Cap Anson saw the boy and made him an offer. Now, being noticed by Cap Anson and being given a tryout with the Chicago White Stockings was as close to paradise as a lad could get in those days, and when he arrived in the city in a green suit with a dollar in his pocket, the pearly gates were in sight.

His real name was Billy Sunday, but the players called him hayseed and rube on account of his suit and playing ball in Iowa, and the first thirteen times at bat he went down swinging. Then the fastest man on the team challenged him to a hundred-yard race, and when Billy, running barefoot, beat him by fifteen feet, they figured he might catch on after all. For eight years he played ball—1883 through 1890—and one season he stole ninety-five bases. The only man to beat him, Billy claimed, was Ty Cobb, and that wasn’t until 1915.

In spite of his running, Cap Anson finally decided he was one of those fellows you might call good field, no hit, but what took the heart out of baseball for Billy was falling in love with a girl from the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Christian Endeavor—that and coming out of a saloon one day and running smack into a group of evangelists, hearing their gospel hymns, and getting converted, from then on it was all uphill, straight and narrow—no more drinking, swearing, or gambling, but talks at the Y.M.C.A., revival meetings, and a celluloid collar. America had seen revival preachers before— there must have been 150 years of tents and wooden platforms, calls to sinners, preachers running down smoking, chewing, drinking, dancing, and card-playing Christians—but no one had seen the equal of Billy. He blew in from the Middle West like a twister, telling folks he was nothing but a “rube of the rubes,” and by 1911 his name was better known than any of your foreign princes. “Get right with God!” was the motto. The church needs fighting men, not those hogjowled, weasel-eyed, sponge-columned, mushy-fisted, jellyspined, pussy-footing, four-flushing, charlotte-russe Christians.” Why, he could work himself into a rage against the devil till the sweat poured off him in a stream: then he’d shed his coat and vest and