Phillies Former Owner Still Faithful

Ruly Carpenter, left, in 1981, announcing the sale of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Image: Philadelphia Inquirer/Rapport Press

If there's anything that makes Ruly Carpenter unruly, it's the twisting fortunes of the Philadelphia Phillies. As the Phils and the New York Mets again jockey for supremacy in the National League East, the normally sedate Carpenter, who owned the team during its only championship season, has become downright boisterous.

While watching games on his living-room TV or listening in on his backyard radio, he grumbles—loudly—about every hung curve, every bobbled ball, every evaporating rally.

"I agonize for the Phillies, I die for them, and sometimes I even curse those goddamn players if they don't succeed," says the 68-year-old Du Pont scion. "My wife continually reminds me to curb my tongue around our seven grandchildren."

His family owned the Phillies for 38 seasons, from 1944 till 1981. The Carpenter Era spanned the proudest period for the Phils, a club that has lost more than 10,100 games—the most by any franchise in sports history—since its inception 126 years ago.

But escalating salaries, not constant defeat, is what knocked Ruly Carpenter out of the owner's box. He was one of the first casualties of the free-agency wars.
    
Carpenter was 3 years old when his grandfather, the industrialist Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Sr., bought the perennially cash-poor Phillies for $400,000—only slightly more than the current minimum salary for rookies.

It wasn't that the team's previous owners were cheap as much as that they tended to have short arms and keep their wallets deep in their pockets. When late 19th century Phils complained about management's skinflint ways, co-owner Col. John Rogers snapped: "If you're looking for a soft job, you should work in a sponge factory."

Whenever a promising player was dug up, he was auctioned off. "Money was once so tight that office furniture was sold to cover spring-training expenses," reports Rich Westcott, author of The Phillies Encyclopedia. Rather than hire groundskeepers to keep the Baker Bowl grass trim, the front office bought three sheep.

R.R.M. Carpenter gave the team to his son Bob, who, at 28, became the youngest club president in baseball history. Bob Carpenter invested some of his swag in young talent—Robin Roberts and Richie Ashburn—and helped create the Whiz Kids, whose 1950 pennant ensured that Philadelphia would remain a National League city.
    
The Whiz Kids quickly fizzled out, though, and morphed into the Wheeze Kids. And Bob's carpentry ranged from shoddy to shameful. The Phillies were the last team in the National League to integrate. He didn't field a black player until 1957—an entire decade after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
    
Ruly says he doesn't recall much of that era. He points out that he didn't join the front office until he graduated from Yale in 1962. Over the next decade, he helped build a farm system that became the envy of baseball.

Bob Carpenter stepped down when he stopped having fun. Distressed by the arrival of salary arbitration, a process he predicted would destroy the game, he handed the reins to Ruly in 1973.

Ruly's summer of discontent came in 1976, when an arbitration decision gave free agency to players.

"I didn't approve of free agency," he mutters, "but I certainly wasn't dumb enough not to take advantage of it."

He could justify paying the great Pete Rose $3.2 million over four years, but when Ted Turner handed journeyman Claudell Washington a five-year, $3.5 million contract to play for the Atlanta Braves, Carpenter realized he was an endangered species.

"There were some deeply ingrained philosophical differences between the Carpenters and other owners as to how the baseball business should be conducted," he says. "They were controlling our payroll, and their numbers didn't work for a family-owned corporation."

His 1980 champs barely broke even during the regular season and needed their 11 post-season games to show a $1.5 million pretax profit. "I knew the only way I could stay an owner for the long term was to bring in business partners," he says, "and I didn't want to play that way."

Barely four months after Philadelphia won the 1980 World Series, Carpenter announced the team was for sale. After reaching the playoffs in the strike-shortened 1981 season—the Phillies lost to Montreal, three games to two—a syndicate snagged them for $28.5 million, only slightly less than the current salary of Alex Rodriguez. Last spring, says Carpenter, the franchise was valued at nearly $800 million.

He doesn't begrudge today's players their vast fortunes. He cringes, however, when reminded of the three-year, $24 million deal that the Phillies gave Adam Eaton in 2006.

Banished to the minors in July, the underachieving Eaton (3-8, 5.71 E.R.A.) was recalled on September 1 and is now baseball's wealthiest bullpen pitcher. "With all due respect," Carpenter says without much respect, "Adam is not competitive at the major-league level."

He is equally dismissive of revenue sharing, the luxury tax, $1,000 box seats, arrogant umpires, and baseball in Washington. What he likes most about the September stretch run is that the Phils have no games left on the West Coast. "The beauty part," he says, crustily, "is that I don't have to stay up all night watching a damn game."