The original article was written by James Lincoln Ray
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bob-carpenter-2/
Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr. was born August 13, 1915, in Montchanin, a community in New Castle County, Delaware. A month later in nearby Philadelphia, the Phillies captured the first National League pennant in the team’s 32-year history. There was no connection then between these two events, but in time the Carpenter name and the Phillies baseball franchise became inextricably intertwined, for better or worse, for more than half a century, and resulted in the most memorable teams in the club’s long history.
To say that Carpenter was born into privilege would be
a gross understatement. His mother,
Margaretta L. du Pont, was an heir to the fortune of E.I. du Pont de Nemours
& Company, the Wilmington chemical firm better known as Du Pont. His father, who joined the company and
married Margaretta in 1906, was a senior executive and member of the board of
directors of the company by the time little Robert came along in 1915.
Montchanin, the community where Carpenter was born,
was named for one of his Du Pont ancestors.
He grew up there with his sister, Irene and Louisa, and his younger
brother William. As the oldest son of an
heir to the Du Pont fortune, from a very young age, Carpenter was referred to as
“the Scion of the du Pont Family.” He
had an active youth, learning to ride horses and hunt, and also play baseball
and football. He developed into a good
athlete in his teens and played on the football team as an end (players played
both offense and defense then) at Duke University, where he developed a
reputation as a tough blocker. “I was a
damn good ending,” he recalled in later years.
“I could smash like hell.”[1]
Despite his “scion” status, Carpenter was also very
much “a regular guy.” According to his college friends and teammates. Wayne Ambler, a baseball player at
Duke who later played for Philadelphia Athletics, recalled that he knew
Carpenter for two years before he found out that his friend was an heir to a
large fortune. “I never knew his as Bob
Carpenter, the du Pont heir,” Ambler said.
“I knew him as Bob Carpenter, the football player. He was easy to talk to, just a regular
guy.”[2]
On June 16, 1938, Carpenter married Mary Kaye Phelps
in Wilmington. The couple would have
three children: Robert III (known as Ruly), Mary, and Keith.
In 1940 Carpenter and his father partnered with Connie
Mack in the ownership of the newly organized Wilmington Blue Rocks, a team
in the Class B Inter-State League that Mack used as a farm club for his
Philadelphia Athletics. The relationship
led to the Carpenter family’s purchase of the Phillies soon thereafter.
By 1943, Philadelphia’s senior circuit entry, the
Phillies, was a competitive financial, and public relations mess. The National League had bought the team from
debt-ridden owner Gerald Nugent and sold it to New York businessman William
Cox, who promptly got caught betting on the Phillies and was banned from the
game. This created an ownership limbo
for the team; it desperately needed a white knight, a wealthy owner who could
not only save the team but turn it around.
That man turned out to be Robert Carpenter Sr., who
bought the team for $400,000 on the strength of a strong recommendation from
Connie Mack, who told Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that the
Carpenter family would stabilize the franchise.
The elder Carpenter immediately handed over the reins to Robert Jr.,
just 28 years old, making him the youngest owner in baseball. The Blue Rocks conveniently became a Phillies
farm team for the 1944 season.
Carpenter was in the Army at the time, so he hired Herb
Pennock, the Boston Red Sox farm director and a former pitcher for the New
York Yankees and other teams, to run the club as general manager. Pennock had been a favorite player and
boyhood idol of Carpenter’s. He also conferred
often, albeit informally, with Mack on the player on business issues.
While Carpenter served in the Army, the team finished
last for two straight years. But under
Pennock and Carpenter, the franchise invested heavily in its farm system,
signing top recruits like speedy leadoff hitter Richie Ashburn, slugger Del
Ennis, and pitchers Robin Roberts and Curt Simmons. Carpenter hired marketing consultants to
investigate ways to increase ticket sales and installed a modern accounting
system to keep track of the organization’s substantial money flow. All of these moves paid off quickly for the
Phillies.
Carpenter was discharged from the Army as a staff
sergeant in 1946 and took over as president of the Phillies. He assumed the general manager’s duties two
years later, in 1948, after Pennock died.
By 1949, key youngsters Ashburn, Ennis, Simmons, and
Roberts had all successfully broken into the big leagues, and for the first
time in many years, the Phillies had a contending team. They finished in third place that year, their
best season since 1917. For his best
efforts and innovations, Carpenter was named Major League Baseball’s Executive
of the Year by The Sporting News.
The next year Carpenter’s vision for the team came to
fruition. Nicknamed the Whiz Kids, the
1950 Phillies were the youngest team in baseball, with an average age of
26. But they had the talent and the
fortitude of a veteran squad. They won
91 games and beat out the Brooklyn Dodgers by two games to win the National
League pennant, their first since Carpenter was born in 1915. They blew a lead in the pennant race but won
the flag on the last day of the season to avoid a tie and a playoff game,
on a dramatic tenth-inning home run by outfielder Dick Sisler. (Sisler, in a twist of fate, was the interim
manager of the Cincinnati Reds team that dealt crucial blows to the Phillies’
pennant run in September 1964.)
The Whiz Kids were swept by the Yankees in the 1950
World Series. They acquitted themselves
admirably though, losing by scores of, 1-0, 2-1 (ten innings), 3-2 and 5-2.
The Phillies played the Yankees fairly even.
The team brightened the spirits of Philadelphia. It was thought that the Phillies had a good
young nucleus and would remain competitive for years.
The success and likeability of the players helped the
Phillies win the affection of the city at the expense of Mack’s Athletics. The 1950 team drew four times as many fans as
the Athletics.
In essence, Carpenter’s ownership was part of the
death knell of the Athletics in Philadelphia.
After the A’s moved to Kansas City before the 1955
season, Carpenter reluctantly bought Connie Mack Stadium (it had been
Shibe Park until 1953, and the Phillies also played there) for
&1,657,000. The ballpark was not an
asset that Carpenter particularly wanted, saying at the time, “We need a
ballpark as much we need a hole in the head.”[3] But the Phillies did need a home park and for
lack of suitable alternatives, the 42-year-old ballpark had to do.
Despite the promise shown by the Whiz Kids in 1950,
that nucleus never reached the heights that many expected. The team’s best finish between 1950 and 1964
with an 83-win, third-place finish in 1953.
After that, the squad fell further each year, culminating in four
consecutive last-place finishes (1958 through 1961). Perhaps Carpenter had “fallen in love” with
his team and became too close with his players.
In any case, he relieved himself of the general manager’s duties in 1959
when he hired John Quinn away from the successful Milwaukee Braves
franchise.
By 1964 the Phillies were back on top – for most of
the season. Led by Rookie of the Year
slugger Dick Allen and superstar pitcher Jim Bunning, the
Phillies were 6 ½ games ahead in the
National League with only 12 games to play.
However, they suffered a stunning collapse, dropping ten straight games
and ultimately losing the pennant to the St.
Louis Cardinals.
By the mid-1960s, both Connie Mack Stadium and the
neighborhood surrounding it had fallen into disrepair. The 50-year-old structure was a shell of its
former grand self. The Phillies needed a
new ballpark. Carpenter sold Connie Mack Stadium in 1967 for $600,000 to
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jerry Wolman, absorbing a loss of more than one
million dollars if one figured in all of the refurbishings Carpenter had done.
The Phillies went on the hunt for a new ballpark. After much strife, dispute, and government
obstruction and incompetence, the city, the Carpenters, and the financiers
chose South Philadelphia as a site.
In 1971, the Phillies began play in a brand-new multi-sport
facility known as Veterans Stadium and popularly called “The Vet.” They shared
the stadium with the football Eagles and were across the street from the
Spectrum, home of the city’s NBA and NHL franchises. The Vet was demolished in March 2004 after
Citizens Bank Park was built.
During his long tenure as owner, Carpenter was well-liked by his players, managers, and coaches.
“He was the best owner I ever played for,” said outfielder Del
Ennis. “Everybody thought the world of
him. He was just like a father.”[4] “He was a tender-hearted guy,” said Eddie
Sawyer, manager of the Whiz Kids/
“When he fired me in 1952. I think it was tougher on him than it was on
me.”[5]
But Carpenter was no softie when it came to issues
like free agency, unions, and sports agents.
He was from the old school, viewed playing professional baseball as a
privilege, and thought players were already well compensated for that
privilege. He became particularly upset
with Curt Flood, who famously refused to report to the Phillies after he had been traded from the St. Louis Cardinals. Flood didn’t want to go to Philadelphia, a
city he felt was racist and perhaps dangerous to his well-being. But his argument was much larger and more
far-reaching than that. Flood argued
that the reserve clause, which allowed teams to control players for their
entire careers – or trade them to a new team without their consent – was an
affront to human dignity, and he likened it to slavery.
“Human dignity, my foot,” the usually mild-mannered
Carpenter once raged in an interview.
“Who gets more recognition, who gets more prestige, than the
professional athlete?”
He was equally unhappy with the players’ unions. “I don’t think the union was necessary.”
Carpenter once said. “I don’t believe
the union belongs in sports.” On agents,
he said, “Look if a player comes into me and we sit and talk, and he’s had a
good year, he’s going to get whatever he wants from me. But if he comes in with a sharp-shooting
lawyer, I will dig up every negative thing I can about that player.”[6]
Perhaps Carpenter’s greatest failure was his
reluctance to sign black players. The
Phillies were the last team to integrate into the National League when they
debuted a rookie named John Kennedy in 1957 – a full decade after Jackie
Robinson broke the color line. It wasn’t until the Phillies signed left
fielder Wes Covington in 1961 that they had a starting player who was
black. People can draw their own
conclusions about whether the Phillies’ decision not to sign black players of
consequence until years after the other teams in the league had black stars
hurt the franchise.
In 1972, a year after the Phillies moved from Connie
Mack Stadium to Veterans Stadium, Carpenter relinquished control of the team to
his son Ruly, then 32. Ruly recalled,
“He came to me at the end of the 1972 season and said, ‘That’s it, you’re
running things. Once he got out, he
never interfered, he never second-guessed.
Of course, he was consulted on major decisions, like [the December 5,
1978) signing Pete Rose as a free agent.”[7]
Carpenter had no regrets about leaving baseball, Ruly
said. “It probably was better for him
that he got out when he did,” he said. “So
much had changed – the advent of free agency, multiyear contracts, and hassles
with the player's associations – I don’t think he would have been very happy with
any of it. I also don’t think that he
would have been happy with some of the new owners.”[8]
After he relinquished the club to his son, Carpenter
was known to stop by Veterans Stadium now and then and pore over minor-league
farm reports. He also continued his
earlier involvement as a booster of the University of Delaware’s athletic
program. “He was a very unpretentious
man," his son said. "I think
he would like to be remembered for his total contributions to athletics.”[9]
Perhaps it was ironic, but after Carpenter retired,
the Phillies finally established the consistency and excellence that he had
sought for so long. The team won three
straight National League East division titles. 1976-1978, and won the
franchise’s first World Series championship in 1980. “[My father was] tickled to death,” Ruly
said. “But the Whiz Kids were his
biggest thrill.”[10]
In 1981, a year after the Phillies won the World
Series, the Carpenters sold the team to a group headed by Phillies vice
president Bill Giles for about $30 million.
Although he wanted the team (and thus himself) to earn
money, Carpenter also believed that because of his inherited wealth, he had a
civic obligation to provide a good team for the city. He was heavily involved in charitable causes
his entire life, and he was a founding member of the Delaware Association for
Retarded Children (DARC), later called the Delaware Foundation Researching
Children with intellectual disabilities.
Carpenter was also heavily involved with Delaware sports at the high school and college levels. In 1953
he instituted the annual Delaware High School Blue-Gold All-Star Football
Game. Beginning in 1956, the game became
a fundraiser for DARC. The game is
played in June at the University of Delaware’s Delaware Stadium.
Carpenter died from lung cancer on July 8, 1990, at
the age of 74. He was buried at
Montchanin, New Castle County, Delaware.
Sources:
Books
1. Bruce Kulick, To Everything a Season, (New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1996).
2. Norman L. Macht, Connie Mack, and the Early
Years of Baseball, (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2007).
3. Rich Westcott, Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks
(Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1996).
Newspapers
1. Brian Smith, “Athletics Days in Philadelphia
Worth Remembering, Reading (Pennsylvania)
Eagle, June 26, 2011.
2. "Robert Carpenter Jr., Former Phillies Owner,
Du Pont Heir, Dies at 74. " Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 11, 1990.
4. “Robert Carpenter, Jr., Ex-Phillies Owner, 74,
” New York Times, July 11, 1990 (obituary).
Websites
Genealogy.com
Baseball-Reference.com
Baseball-Almanac.com
Geni.com.
Notes
1. “Robert Carpenter Jr., Former Phillies Owner,
Du Pont Heir, Dies at 74.” Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 11, 1990.
2. Ibid.
3. Rich Westcott, Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks,
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996),
115.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Robert Carpenter Jr., Former Phillies Owner,
Du Pont Heir, Dies at 74.” Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 11, 1990.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
Full Name: Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter
Born: August 31, 1915, at Wilmington, DE (US)
Died: July 8, 1990, at Wilmington, DE (US)
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