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, early, life, amateur and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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“I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life.”
—Edward T. Lowe, and Frank Strayer. Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill)
“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)
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