Sunday at the Ballpark [Hardcover]

Wendy Knickerbocker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 2000 | Series: American Sports History Series (Book 17)

Paperback edition available October, 2003. Billy Sunday was among the greatest of American evangelists. During the first quarter of the twentieth century his sermons reached hundreds of thousands of people, and he was widely quoted and admired. He was an influential social leader who supported and popularized conservative causes, and he was an ardent champion of Prohibition.

But this was not all Billy Sunday was noted for. He was also well known as a former professional baseball player. During the heyday of Ty Cobb and Christy Matthewson, he set base-stealing records in the 1880s and to have been the first baseball player to refuse to play on Sundays. Many say his reputation as a baseball player was not rightfully deserved. Although his skill alone may not have topped the charts, he was exceptional in his personality, behavior and exciting style of play.

In this work, Wendy Knickerbocker explores Sunday's professional baseball career to examine the coming of age of an interesting and important character in American history. Detail is given to the entirety of his career as well as his playing style. She includes his struggles and accomplishments in his professional career as well as his religious one. A bibliography encourages further reference.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The author helps make Sunday come alive as a person on and off the ball field....[Knickerbocker] uses all of Sunday's own writings, as well as many records of the Presbyterian Church and the YMCA. This array of sources makes the story more complete....Too often baseball texts focus on the game and ignore the life outside the stadium. Knickerbocker ably weaves the two stories together to create the full life story of Billy Sunday, ballplayer and evangelist. (Journal Of Sport History )

In Sunday at the Ballpark we have the best-balanced account in print about the famous ballplayer turned evangelist, Billy Sunday...Wendy Knickerbocker writes smoothly and organizes her material well. Her slim volume on the colorful...Billy Sunday, is worth reading. (John Holway with Dorothy Jane Mills Www.Haroldseymour.Com )

Wendy Knickerbocker has packed the stories of two thin, but not unimportant, careers into one thin, but not unimportant volume. The text deals with the careers of Billy Sunday, itinerant professional baseball player, and Billy Sunday, itinerant professional evangelist...Knickerbocker is able to demonstrate the two Sunday careers were inextricably connected. (International Journal Of The History Of Sport )

This is the first scholarly attempt to look at the startling complexities of one of baseball's unique individuals. (Usa Today Baseball Weekly )

...covers Sunday's baseball career exhaustively, seemingly mentioning nearly every single game and every quote about him found in Sporting Life or The Sporting News. (Steven A. Riess Journal Of Illinois History )

The author helps make Sunday come alive as a person on and off the ball field....[Knickerbocker] uses all of Sunday's own writings, as well as many records of the Presbyterian Church and the YMCA. This array of sources makes the story more complete....Toooften baseball texts focus on the game and ignore the life outside the stadium. Knickerbocker ably weaves the two stories together to create the full life story of Billy Sunday, ballplayer and evangelist.... (Journal Of Sport History )

Knickerbocker's portrayal of baseball in the 1880s...is superb. (Sports Collectors Digest )

Historians of US religion are familiar with Sunday's legendary first job, with may pointing to his dual professional affiliations (athlete and celebrity preacher) as a symbolic exhibit in the joint history of evangelicalism and entertainment. Knickerbocker is uninterested in symbolism or historiography; for her, this slim volume is a simple historical exercise, a corrective to Sunday's mythic accountings in his autobiography, "The Sawdust Trail." When, where, and against whom did Billy Sunday play professional baseball? And how well did he do? This statistical experience is scrupulously narrated in Sunday at the Ballpark. Relying primarily on newspaper accounts, Knickerbocker reconstructs Sunday's brief tenure as a right and center fielder for the Chicago White Stockings, Pittsburgh Alleghenies, and Philadelphia Phillies. According to Knickerbocker's assembled athletic profile, Sunday was an adequate athlete, with considerable speed but limited defensive agility. More important than numerical success was Sunday's social development during this era, which provided him not only with an abundance of sermonic metaphors, but also introduced him to A.G. Spalding, manager of the White Stockings, who served as a key ethical and rhetorical mentor. Knickerbocker never pursues the broader themes that shadow her chronological subject. As she notes, Billy Sunday's career coincided with rapid urbanization and profound cultural change. This seven-year epoch might have served as a point of departure for riffs on the local dynamics of these national shifts. However, this was not Knickerbocker's purpose. Rather, she sought to set the record straight; this she does with clear prose and precise research. (Religious Studies Review )

About the Author

Wendy Knickerbocker is an academic librarian and a Maine native. She is currently Director of Library Services at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press (July 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810837277
• ISBN-13: 978-0810837270
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,694,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wendy Knickerbocker is a Maine native and an independent scholar with interest in American cultural history and American religious history. She is also a librarian with over twenty years of experience in academic libraries as a cataloguer, reference librarian, and administrator. Ms. Knickerbocker is the author of Sunday at the Ballpark: Billy Sunday's Professional Baseball Career, 1883-1890, and several articles on Billy Sunday. Her most recent publication is the essay "The Baseball Evangelist Strikes Out John Barleycorn: Billy Sunday and Prohibition," in the book The Politics of Baseball, edited by Ron Briley, Mcfarland Publishers, 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Short annotation of Wendy Knickerbocker's biography on Billy Sunday, September 24, 2008

By 

Eric M. Bradley "Bucky the Librarian" (Grand Rapids, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sunday at the Ballpark: Billy Sunday's Professional Baseball Career, 1883-1890 (American Sports History Series) (Paperback)

A critical treatment of Sunday`s baseball career, part of the American Sports History Series. Covers American and baseball culture of the late nineteenth century, Sunday`s baseball career, and key events of Sunday`s life during his career, including his conversion to Christianity and marriage to Helen Amelia Thompson.