In 1887 an outfielder with the Chicago White Stockings baseball team found himself at a saloon after a night of playing. Although this was a typical night for him, it quickly turned out to be far from that. Outside the bar a group of missionaries sang hymns and he found himself intently listening. Billy Sunday wandered outside and sat on a curb close by and was transformed in a way that would cause him to make an indelible mark on America’s History.
After 8 years in the National League Sunday quit baseball altogether in order to spread the message that had changed his life so radically. He became a full time evangelist and traveled the country preaching the Gospel in a style few had seen before. Making unexpected use of his athleticism his sermons were spectacles in which Sunday would leap up onto the podium or make a lap around the “Sawdust trail.” (The aisle of Billy’s tent revivals were covered in sawdust in order to avoid making a muddy mess as people marched in droves to the front to give their lives to Christ.)
That's Billy
In 1901 Sunday came to Toledo and held a revival that lasted seven weeks of two-a-day services preaching to an estimated 30,000 people. He continued to host early revivals in Toledo for the next 20 years. The revivals were hosted in a “tabernacle,” built where Promenade Park now exists. Famously the tabernacle held a banner which proclaimed “Toledo For Christ.”
He was a man of style and brute force. Though he wasn’t a Toledoan he fit right in here. It’s partly because of his legacy that even today our city is called Holy Toledo.