Graham preached from a bright blue $15,000 podium at second base, surrounded by the live greenery of the Braves' infield and a cluster of yellow and violet plastic flowers immediately under the platform. Each night, he strode across the field with head bowed, looking up once or twice--precisely when he reached the photographers who wanted a candid snapshot of him.

Before beginning his sermon, Graham would let loose a sales pitch for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), a non-profit corporation that oversees and budgets all his activities. "We can't keep bringing me into your living room without your help, folks," he'd say in sermonic tones with arms flailing. He'd direct the crowd's attention to the collection buckets being passed around, the concession stand inside the stadium with scores of books by and about Graham and religious experiences. Then he'd remind them to send contributions to the national association: "Now that address again is Billy Graham; Minneapolis, Minnesota..." All along, the cameras in the pressbox were whirring, the spotlights gleaming, the coordinators giving signals.

The plea brought results. Collections in the buckets totalled $173,513 over the seven-day period, but that was peanuts compared to the contributions that Graham's televised plea would bring. One of the BGEA officers up in the press box said that mail offerings cover most of the association's $20 million annual budget.

After that pitch, Graham went into a windup for the real product--and his salesmanship was equally masterful. Each night it was a little different. Two nights were "youth nights," so his special guests were disproportionately sports celebrities and rock singers, and his sermon played with the theme of romantic love.

He even had a formula for keeping marriages together--a chain of command in authority. First God, then the husband, then the wife and finally the children, who are responsible to the parents. "There must be acceptance and appreciation," he said.

But whatever the angle, the conclusion was the same. "With all of our best efforts, neither my generation nor the younger generation is going to bring utopia to earth. Only Christ will do that. We are to work at it and pray for it but ultimately and eventually utopia will only come when human nature has been transformed." Then he'd raise his arms and voice in a clarion call to the unsaved to come forward and accept Christ. He had confronted them with problems of human relations, of social inequality, of government corruption--problems that dwarf men into insignificance and inadequacy. And then he had given them a way out--The way out.

"Don't put it off. Don't wait until tomorrow. You might be dead then," he implored. His words were identical each night. "Don't let distance keep you from Christ," he'd say, especially to those in the upper deck.

And then they came streaming forward. From my seat in the press box, they looked like ants. But close up, they were a melee of starry-eyed couples, teetering old folks, prissy little girls with their hands over their mouths to cover the giggles, middle-aged couples and singles.

For 15 minutes each night they spilled forward from their cold, hard seats to join Graham in Christ's verdant kingdom--located between the first and third base lines. Over the week, more than 10,000 came forward for the five minute registration session with a corps of counselors who put the newly won souls on Graham's mailing lists and sent their names to local ministers for safe-keeping.

****

One night, I followed the throngs down to the field to find out what had siezed them. But they didn't know.

"Were you inspired?" I ventured.

"No," they said.

"Well, did you have a vision?" I asked.

"No," they said.