Oscar "Happy" Felsch: 1920

Hap was my father's great-uncle. Anyone out there that would like to get in touch pls email me at beautiful.dysaster (at) yahoo.

I'm Oscar Felsch's granddaughter. He was a great and kind person. You're 100 percent correct. He was never involved. On his deathbed, he told my dad the facts. He will always be a great and honest player to us, his family.

It is a pretty rare name in fact I have never met another Felsch outside of my family. At any rate my father used to joke about being related to Happy and I must admit I resemble the man in the picture. Who Knows?

Happy Felsch was my great-great-great uncle, and he went to his grave saying he didn't throw the game.

As a young kid in the 50's, I remember Happy standing in front of the bleacher fans at Milwaukee County Stadium during Braves games. Back then the bleachers were truly bleachers. Happy would put his baseball cap on sideways and pitch to an imaginary batter. Always on his last pitch, he would raise his head to the sky and follow the imaginary ball out of the park. All of the bleacher fans (adults and kids) would get a huge laugh out of the skit every time he performed it. It wasn't until many years later after watching "Eight Men Out" that I learned he was a former major leaguer and had been involved in the White Sox scandal. Great memory.

I remember too that his hand was always shaking. He might have had Parkinson's disease.

So named because his mournful visage belied his sobriquet.

Felsch was portrayed by Charlie Sheen in John Sayles' film version of "Eight Men Out." Good flick -- check it out. John Cusack and D.B. Sweeney were in it too, and even Studs Terkel had a cameo as a newspaper reporter.

The guy in back is also adjusting his fly...

Notice the player in the background. His uniform is filthy. Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, was so cheap he made the players launder their own uniforms. The players resented this and often played in dirty uniforms. Because of this, the White Sox were sometimes called the "Black Sox" even before the scandal of the thrown World Series of 1919.