The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Sunday, Billy
(William Ashley Sunday), 1863–1935, American evangelist, b. Ames, Iowa, in the era around World War I. A professional baseball player (1883–90), he later worked for the Young Men’s Christian Association in Chicago (1891–95) and, during that time, became associated with the Presbyterian itinerant evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman (1859–1918). After leading a successful revival in Garner, Iowa (1896) Sunday became a full-time evangelist. Known as “the baseball evangelist,” Sunday drew large crowds to his revivals with his flamboyant style. As the most popular American evangelist of the World War I era, he raised much of the popular support for prohibition.
