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:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“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)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)