Happy Felsch was one of the cadre of Black Sox banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. Guess he wasn’t so happy after that. His best season was the last of his six-year career, all spent with Chicago, in which he had 40 doubles, 15 triples, 14 homers and 115 runs batted in to go with a .338 battin average.
He also gets birthday greetings, having been born on this date in 1891.
Kitty Bransfield was a turn of the 20th century player, mostly for the Pirates and Phillies.
Just as a note: I use the wonderfully informative newsletter I receive from BaseballLibrary.com as a source for my birthday, death day, and nicknames material. One thing I’ve noticed is that there are no good nicknames anymore. Perhaps sportswriters of the times had to give the athletes a bit of “zing” since the printed word was the only means of information in those years. Now that the ballplayers’ faces are so relatively familiar, there’s no need to make them “colorful” anymore. The most recent player I can think of to fall into this category was Turk Wendell, who as so out there he should have been a lefty.
Some more items on nicknames or the lack thereof:
The most popular nicknames by position, from the Society for American Baseball Research
Players’ nicknames by team (Wikipedia)
ESPN’s reader poll on the game’s best nicknames
An observation abut the dearth of good modern nicknames from Rowan University’s student newspaper.
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