R. R. M. Carpenter, Jr.

Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr. (1915-1990) was an owner and club president of the Philadelphia Phillies of American Major League Baseball. When he took command of the Phils, in November 1943 after his father purchased the franchise, Carpenter became the youngest club president in baseball history. He would serve as president of the Phillies until 1972, when his son, R.R.M. "Ruly" Carpenter III, assumed the position.

The Carpenter family owned the Phillies from 1943-81, the most successful period in their history, winning National League championships in 1950 and 1980, National League East Division titles in 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1980, and the team's only World Series title, in 1980. Distressed by the free-spending, free-agent era of the day, and anticipating the 1981 baseball strike, the Carpenters sold the Phils months after their World Series triumph ["Carpenters' Motive: Prod Other Owners," The New York Times, March 8, 1981] . The team was still one of the strongest in the game: it made the 1981 playoffs, and won the 1983 NL pennant under its new owners.

The Carpenters hailed from Wilmington, Delaware. Robert R.M. Carpenter Jr., known as "Bob" throughout baseball, was the son of Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter and Margaretta Lammot Du Pont. He married Mary Kaye Phelps (born September 11, 1917 in Kentucky) on June 18, 1938, daughter of Zack Phelps and Ethel Moreton Phelps. He attended Duke University, where he starred in football. When industrialist and sportsman R.R.M. Carpenter Sr. bought the perennially cash-strapped Phillies in 1943 — and when Bob Carpenter invested some of his fortune in talented young players such as Robin Roberts and Richie Ashburn (future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame) after World War II — they helped create the fabled "Whiz Kids" pennant-winning club of 1950. More important, they ensured that Philadelphia would remain a National League city. The Phils' rise of the late 1940s and early 1950s coincided with the final decline of the city's once-dominant American League club, the Athletics of Connie Mack. By 1955, the A's were on their way to Kansas City, Missouri (they have played in Oakland, California, since 1968). Meanwhile, Carpenter and the Phillies bought Shibe Park (renamed "Connie Mack Stadium") from the A's and solidified their hold on Delaware Valley baseball fans.

Although Bob Carpenter admitted that he had only seen the Phillies play "two or three games" before his family purchased the team (and had not attended an NL game until 1940) [The New York Times, Nov. 24, 1943] , the Carpenters were not new to running a baseball franchise: prior to their purchase of the Phillies, they had owned and operated a minor league baseball club, the original Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Interstate League (not to be confused with the current Wilmington Blue Rocks). Bob Carpenter took an active role in the management of the Phillies. He served as the club's general manager without portfolio after the January 1948 death of Herb Pennock, through the 1950 NL pennant, and until April of 1954. For his efforts in rebuilding the franchise, Carpenter was hailed by The Sporting News as Major League Executive of the Year for 1949 — one year before the Phils' pennant-winning campaign.

But the 1950 Whiz Kids were not able to sustain their high level of play and were the last National League club to break the baseball color line, in 1957. The team hovered at and under .500 through the middle of the 1950s, then collapsed completely, finishing last from 1958 through 1961.

However, in 1962 the Phillies once again exceeded the .500 mark, and placed in the National League's first division in 1963. The following season, 1964, the Phils burst into the league lead and appeared headed for their third NL pennant in late September, only to lose ten games in succession and fritter away a 6½-game lead to finish tied for second. They would not contend again for a dozen years. But Bob and Ruly Carpenter appointed Paul Owens, the team's shrewd farm system director, as general manager in by|1972, and Owens would bring the Phils back to contending status during the last five years of the Carpenter family's ownership.

Aside from baseball, Carpenter was wealthy from investments and family relations with the DuPont family.

Bob Carpenter died of cancer at age 74 on July 8, 1990.

References

* [http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/nine/v009/9.1kashatus.pdf Kashutas, William C., "Dick Allen, the Phillies and Racism"]
*The New York Times, Nov. 24, 1943; March 8, 1981; July 11, 1990.