Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Robert Ruliph Morgan Jr. CARPENTER
R.R.M. "Bob" Carpenter, Jr. (1915-1990)
As a trustee, educator, sports enthusiast, conservationist and benefactor, no one has symbolized the University of Delaware's athletic spirit and tradition more than Robert Ruliph Morgan "Bob" Carpenter, Jr.
In 1940, in conjunction with Henry Belin duPont and John J. DeLuca, Carpenter provided funds to benefit coaching and teaching at the University of Delaware, thus beginning a long history of support for the University’s athletic programs.
Carpenter was honored as Major League Baseball Executive of the Year in 1949, and it was his Philadelphia Phillies baseball team that won the National League pennant in 1950. One of the founding members of the Delaware Association for Retarded Children (DARC), Carpenter instituted the annual Delaware High School Blue-Gold All-Star Football Game in 1953, which is played at Delaware Stadium.
Carpenter joined the University of Delaware’s Board of Trustees in 1945, a position he held for 45 years. A member of the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame, he was inducted into the charter class of the University of Delaware Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997. The University’s Bob Carpenter Sports and Convocation Center, built in 1992, is named in his honor.
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - July 11, 1990
Deceased Name: ROBERT CARPENTER JR., FORMER PHILLIES OWNER, DU PONT HEIR, DIES AT 74
When he was 28, Robert R.M. Carpenter Jr., a pheasant-hunting du Pont heir, received an unusual gift from his father.
It was a major-league baseball team, the Phillies, and it cost Robert R.M. Carpenter Sr. only $400,000 in 1943.
That year, Bob Carpenter became the youngest president of a major-league baseball team. In the next 30 years as owner and president of the Phillies, Mr. Carpenter produced the "Whiz Kids" pennant winners of 1950, the folderoo Phillies of 1964 and eight last-place teams.
Mr. Carpenter, who had a lifelong fondness for big pitchers who threw hard, and a strong distaste for players' agents and unions, died Sunday at his home in Montchanin, a suburb of Wilmington. He was 74, and he had been ill the past year with cancer of the lining of his lungs.
In 1972, a year after the Phillies moved from Connie Mack Stadium to Veterans Stadium, Mr. Carpenter relinquished control of the team to his son Ruly, then 32.
"He came to me at the end of the 1972 season and said, 'That's it, you're running things,' " his son recalled. "Once he got out, he never interfered, he never second-guessed. Of course, he was consulted on major decisons, like signing Pete Rose as a free agent."
In 1980, when the Phillies won the World Series, Mr. Carpenter was ''tickled to death," his son said. "But the Whiz Kids were his biggest thrill."
Mr. Carpenter had no regrets about leaving baseball, his son said.
"It probably was better for him that he got out when he did," said Ruly Carpenter. "So much had changed - the advent of free agency, multiyear contracts and hassles with the players associations - I don't think he would have been very happy with any of it. I also don't think he would have been happy with some of the new owners."
If the Carpenters weren't always successful on the playing field, they did well in the business world. In 1981, a year after the Phillies won the World Series, the Carpenters sold the team to a group headed by Bill Giles for about $30 million.
Mr. Carpenter was born a scion of the du Pont family. His mother was the former Margaretta L. du Pont, and his father was vice president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Inc., the Wilmington chemical firm.
Baseball wasn't even Mr. Carpenter's favorite sport. "Football was his first love," said son Ruly.
At Duke University, Mr. Carpenter, a sturdy 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, played left end for two years on varsity football teams coached by Wallace Wade. In those days, an end's primary responsibility was not pass-catching but blocking, and Mr. Carpenter was pretty good at it.
"I was a damn good end," he recalled in later years. "I could smash like hell."
Wayne Ambler, who went to Duke with Mr. Carpenter and later became an infielder with the old Philadelphia Athletics, recalled that he knew Mr. Carpenter for two years before he found out he was from a very wealthy family.
"I never knew him as Bob Carpenter, the du Pont heir," Ambler said. "I knew him as Bob Carpenter, the football player. He played end and he took a beating."
In those days, Mr. Carpenter "never wore a necktie," Ambler said. "He had a car that was 10 blocks long but he never drove it himself. He was easy to talk to, just a regular guy."
When he took over the Phillies, Mr. Carpenter was in the Army. He promptly hired Herb Pennock, a former New York Yankees pitcher who was Mr. Carpenter's boyhood idol, to run the club as general manager. He also conferred frequently with Connie Mack, who at the time was running the cross-town Athletics.
"He didn't try to run things himself, like a lot of rich guys who run ballclubs," Ambler said. "He didn't stick his fingers into the baseball operation. It's not easy to do that when you have such a big toy."
While he served in the Army, the team finished last for two straight years. But under Pennock and Mr. Carpenter, the team began signing young players like Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts and Curt Simmons, and they beefed up the farm system.
Mr. Carpenter was discharged from the Army as a staff sergeant in 1946, and after Pennock died of a heart attack in 1948 Mr. Carpenter took his place as general manager. In 1949, the team finished third, and Mr. Carpenter was named Major League Executive of the Year.
The following year, the Whiz Kids won the Phillies' first pennant in 35 years. It was Mr. Carpenter's happiest moment.
In the press, Mr. Carpenter was often referred to as a "country squire" who divided his reading time between the Sporting News and the Wall Street Journal. Columnist Red Smith once described Mr. Carpenter as "a princeling of the blood, scion of the vast du Pont empire, who eats bologna on pumpernickel only when he feels like it."
While he ran the Phillies, Mr. Carpenter was known to work out with his ballplayers, who were not much younger than he was.
"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."
"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," Sawyer said.
"We had won the pennant and a lot of these kids, bonus players - I think winning the pennant went to their heads," Sawyer said.
In the days before free agency and multiyear contracts, general manager John Quinn, who was hired in 1959, was used to total control over players by management. He hired private detectives to tail his ballplayers to make sure they obeyed curfew.
Mr. Carpenter gave Quinn "100 percent approval" when Quinn went into contract negotiations with players armed with "negative statistics" that documented how a player's performance had dropped off.
Ashburn, the centerfielder on the Whiz Kids who won a batting title in 1958, went in to talk contract with Quinn and was surprised when he was asked to take a pay cut.
"Ashburn once kidded my father that he started the wage freeze before Nixon did," his son said.
In his last years of running the team, Mr. Carpenter became upset with such players as Curt Flood, who sued and successfully overturned baseball's reserve clause. Flood argued that the standard contract clause that bound a player to a baseball club for his entire career robbed a man of his dignity.
"Human dignity, my foot," Carpenter once raged in an interview. "Who gets more recognition, who gets more prestige, than the professional athlete?"
He was equally unhappy with players' unions.
"I don't think the union was necessary," Mr. Carpenter said. "I don't believe the union belongs in sports."
On agents, he once said, "Look, if a player comes in to 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'm going to dig up every negative thing I can about that player."
After he relinquished the club to his son, Mr. 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."
In addition to his son Ruly, he is survived by his wife, the former Mary Kaye Phelps; another son, Keith; a daughter, Mary Kaye Murray; a sister, and four grandchildren.
Private graveside services were held yesterday in Montchanin.
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