Sunday, Billy (1862-1935), was a baseball player who became a famous evangelist. He used his baseball background, slangy language, flamboyant manners, and highly developed promotional methods to become the most popular evangelist of the time. He was supposed to have preached to over 100 million people, and to have converted over a million in his campaigns.
William Ashley Sunday was born on Nov. 19, 1862, in Ames, Iowa. His early years were spent with his grandparents and at an orphans home. Sunday played baseball for major league teams in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia from 1883 to 1890. During these years he was converted and began working with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Billy Sunday became a Presbyterian minister in 1903. He died on Nov. 6, 1935.
