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Naturally, Pete Rose and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson got the headlines from the decision announced May 13 by Major League Baseball that made those players eligible for the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame. But the new edict affected 17 players in total, including Milwaukee native Oscar "Happy" Felsch.
Felsch and his teammates involved in the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919 have been removed from the permanently ineligible list by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.
To be clear, there's no reason to believe Felsch will someday wind up in the Hall of Fame, even if he had fared well during his career. The center fielder only played six seasons, all with the Chicago White Sox from 1915 through 1920, hitting 38 career homers with 443 RBIs and a .293 average.
Felsch's ban cut any hopes of a longer career short. Jim Nitz, writer for the Society of American Baseball Research, speculates that, if not for the scandal, Felsch might be remembered as one of the best all-around center fielders in baseball history.
The Milwaukee sandlot legend, dubbed the "Pride of Teutonia Avenue," hailed from the city's north side and played minor-league ball at multiple spots in Wisconsin, including with the minor-league Brewers in 1914.
It was believed that, in 1911, he hit the longest home run in the history of Borchert Field, the beating heart of baseball in Milwaukee pre-1950. It wasn't long before his contract was sold to the White Sox, where he became a star.
Milwaukee fans followed closely when the 1917 White Sox won the World Series, and Felsch was given a hero's welcome upon return to the city.
But as the well-documented story goes, White Sox players disgruntled with their treatment from owner Charles Comiskey agreed to participate in a lucrative game-fixing conspiracy in the 1919 World Series.
The Sox played so poorly against the Cincinnati Reds in that series that rumors of game-fixing surged. Two players confessed, and then Felsch admitted taking a $5,000 payment, too, though he denied helping his team lose despite a poor offensive showing.
The eight players involved were acquitted in a criminal trial but suspended for life from organized baseball.
It was Felsch who helped make the story so widely known. He was a primary source for writer Eliot Asinof, whose 1963 book "Eight Men Out" served as the source material for the 1988 movie of the same name that portrayed the scandal. Charlie Sheen, who also played the iconic Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn in the movie "Major League," which was filmed in Milwaukee, played Felsch in the movie.
After the ban from Major League Baseball, Felsch returned home and opened a grocery store in Waukesha. He was again allowed to play semipro baseball in 1930. In 1933, now in his 40s, 15,000 fans came to see his Bucher Brews team in a sandlot triple-A clash against Ziemer Sausage, a sign of his continually strong presence in his home city.
Felsch settled into life as a bar owner, then a crane operator, and continued to be the subject of local legend before his death at age 73 in 1964. He and the other seven members of the infamous scandal are now reinstated in the eyes of MLB, more than a century after their banishment.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee baseball legend reinstated alongside Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson
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