Billy Sunday
1862 – 1935 · United States
“...let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
A fast-running outfielder for the Chicago White Stockings, Sunday walked away from professional baseball after a dramatic conversion following a night of drinking with teammates that led him instead into a Chicago mission hall. He became the most famous American evangelist of the early twentieth century, preaching with the same physical energy he'd once brought to the ballfield — running, leaping, and smashing furniture for effect — to an estimated hundred million people over his career. He was also a driving public voice behind Prohibition, helping build momentum toward the Eighteenth Amendment.
Read more on Wikipedia ↗Portrait: Unknown photographer · Public domain