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Happy Felsch

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Baseball Player

The Resume

    (April 7, 1891-July 17, 1964)
    Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Birth name was Oscar Emil Felsch
    Center fielder for the Chicago White Sox (1915-20)
    One of the ‘Black Sox’ who threw the 1919 World Series
    Banned from Major League Baseball for life

Why he might be annoying:

    His birth year has also been listed as 1893 and 1894 and his birth date as August 22.
    He dropped out of school after the sixth grade.
    In the 1919 World Series, he had an anemic .192 batting average and twice badly misplayed fly balls in crucial situations.
    He sued Major League Baseball and the White Sox for $100,000 claiming that his lifetime ban from baseball had ‘permanently impaired’ his reputation. He settled for about $1,500 -- $1,166 in salary for the portion of the 1920 season after his ban went into effect, plus interest.
    While testifying for Shoeless Joe Jackson in a similar lawsuit, he denied recognizing his signature on his White Sox contract and related documents, resulting in his being sentenced to a year of probation for perjury (1925).

Why he might not be annoying:

    In the minor leagues, his home runs broke the distance records for several ballparks, such as exceeding 500 feet in Milwaukee’s Athletic Park.
    He was the first White Sox to hit over 100 RBIs in a season (102 in 1917, tying Ty Cobb for second in the AL).
    Babe Ruth ranked him as the best center fielder of his era.
    He was one of the primary sources for ‘Eight Men Out’ author Eliot Asinof, who found him to be charming and articulate.
    He said about the Black Sox fix, ‘I got $5,000. I could have got just about that much by being on the level if the Sox had won the Series. And now I'm out of baseball — the only profession I know anything about, and a lot of gamblers have gotten rich. The joke seems to be on us.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 19 Votes: 68.42% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying