Early Life and Amateur Career
Happ was born in Spring Valley, Illinois and raised in nearby Peru, Illinois along with 2 older sisters. He attended high school at St. Bede Academy, where he was a four-year letter winner in baseball and basketball. He was named Bureau County Athlete of the Year during his senior season.
After graduating high school in 2001, Happ enrolled in Northwestern University, where he majored in history. He was named to the All-Big Ten First Team in his freshman, sophomore, and junior seasons, during which he compiled a 16–11 win–loss record, an ERA of 2.88, and a 251/90 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 228.1 innings pitched. Happ chose to forego his senior season and entered the 2004 Major League Baseball Draft, where he was selected in the third round (92nd overall) by the Philadelphia Phillies.
Read more about this topic: J. A. Happ
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, amateur and/or career:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
““Maman”, said Annaïse, her voice strangely weak. “Here is the water.”
A thin blade of silver came forward in the plain and the peasants ran alongside it, crying and singing.
...
“Oh, Manuel, Manuel, why are you dead?” moaned Délira.
“No”, said Annaïse, and she smiled through her tears, “no, he is not dead”.
She took the old woman’s hand and pressed gently against her belly where new life stirred.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)