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Billy Sunday November 19, 1862 – November 6, 1935
Sunday was a popular professional baseball player during the 1880s and then the most celebrated and influential American evangelist during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Born into poverty, Sunday spent years in an orphanage before taking a series of odd jobs in several small Iowa towns. Sunday as he demonstrated his prowess in amateur athletics. Adrian "Cap" Anson recommendation to the president of the Chicago White Stockings, signed Sunday to the defending National League champions. Sunday’s exceptional speed provided him the opportunity to play major league baseball for eight years. After hearing hymns sung by the Pacific Garden Mission, Sunday became a born-again Christian in 1886. He retired from baseball in 1891 to work as an assistant to an evangelist, and became a preacher himself in 1896. He gradually developed his skills as a pulpit evangelist
in the Midwest and then, during the early twentieth century, he became
the nation’s most famous evangelist with his colloquial sermons and frenetic
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