Billy Sunday

Billy Sunday was a former professional baseball player who became one of the most popular evangelists of the 20th century. He conducted over 300 revival campaigns and spoke to audiences totaling 100,000,000 – the largest number ever evangelized before the advent of broadcasting.

William Ashley Sunday (1862-1935) was born in 1862 in a log cabin in Ames, Iowa. His father was killed in the Civil War a month after Billy was born. Not long after that, Billy's impoverished mother sent him and his brother to an orphanage. At 15, he left the orphanage and traveled the country taking various jobs. Six years later, in 1883, he started his baseball career with the Chicago White Sox. An exceptionally fast man, he was the first player to ever round the bases in 14 seconds.

Like many of his peers, Sunday enjoyed the hard-drinking life of a professional athlete in the late 19th century. But one evening in 1887, he stopped to hear a group of gospel singers after leaving a Chicago saloon. They invited him to a meeting at the Pacific Garden Mission. Sunday went to the mission and was powerful converted.

In 1892, he left baseball and his $5,000 annual salary for an $84 a month ministry position with the YMCA. He began preaching revivals in small towns and then stormed the big cities, gaining fame and a huge following along the way. Billy Sunday’s influence is evident in Frank Sinatra’s famous song Chicago.

Chicago, Chicago that toddling town
Chicago, Chicago I'll show you around - I love it
Bet your bottom dollar you'll lose the blues in Chicago
The town that Billy Sunday could not shut down

Sunday often directed his “fire and brimstone” sermons against liberalism, gambling, and evolution. But he turned his full wrath against alcoholism. He was a leader in the Prohibition movement and one of the primary influences leading to its adoption in 1919. He said,

“I am the sworn, eternal, and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command. Whiskey and beer are all right in their place, but their place is in hell.”

Sunday's fiery preaching drew thousands of people to his revivals. It is estimated that over 300,000 people received Jesus as Lord.

“I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, and I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist. I'll butt it as long as I've got a head. I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old and fistless and footless and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition!”