Happy Felsch

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1919 photograph of Oscar "Happy" Felsch

Oscar Emil "Happy" Felsch (August 22, 1891 – August 17, 1964) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Chicago White Sox from 1915 to 1920. He is probably best known for his involvement in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Happy Felsch was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and began his baseball career with the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, and was sold to the White Sox, making his major league debut on April 14.

In 1919, Felsch agreed to join a group of White Sox players that planned to intentionally lose the World Series in exchange for monetary payments from a network of gamblers. Felsch received $5,000 for his role in the fix.

For his part in the fix, Felsch was made permanently ineligible from Major League Baseball, along with seven other players, by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Happy Felsch would spend the next 15 years touring the country with various amateur teams. He died of liver disease in Milwaukee in 1964, just five days before his 73rd birthday.

Well, the beans are spilled and I think I'm through with baseball. 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.

— Oscar "Happy" Felsch as quoted by the Chicago American newspaper