R. R. M. Carpenter, Jr.

Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr. (August 31, 1915 – July 8, 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, the 28-year-old Carpenter became the youngest club president in baseball history. He became principal owner upon his father's death in 1949 and would serve as president of the Phillies until 1972, when his son succeeded him.

The Carpenter family owned the Phillies from 1943 to 1981, winning National League championships in 1950 and 1980, National League East Division titles in 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1980, and the team's first World Series title in 1980. Distressed by the free-spending, free-agent era, and anticipating the 1981 baseball strike, the Carpenters sold the Phils months after their World Series triumph. The team made the 1981 playoffs, and won the 1983 NL pennant under its new owners.

R. R. M. Carpenter Jr. was known as Bob Carpenter throughout baseball; both his father and his son were known as "Ruly." He was born on August 31, 1915, in Wilmington, Delaware, to the elder Carpenter and Margaretta Lammot Du Pont.

Bob Carpenter attended Duke University, where he starred in football. He married Mary Kaye Phelps on June 18, 1938. She was born on September 11, 1917, in Kentucky to Zack Phelps and Ethel Moreton Phelps. When his father, an industrialist and sportsman, 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. In 1955, the Athletics left Philadelphia for 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, solidified their hold on Delaware Valley baseball fans, and moved into Veterans Stadium in 1970.

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