When was the phillies founded

Phillies Wordmark Logo. Phillies Concept Logo. Sports History. Baseball History. Basketball History. College History. Football History. Hockey History. So that he would have someone to run the club when that happened, his first move was to hire Herb Pennock as general manager. Pennock was a former pitcher and a future Hall of Famer. He most recently was the farm director of the Boston Red Sox.

He had been friendly with the Carpenters for many years, even to the point of taking Bob as a youngster on a road trip with him when he played for the New York Yankees. In the Phillies had finished seventh, but having been eighth in the five previous seasons, Pennock and Carpenter formulated a plan to pull the club out of the National League dungeon.

It would be a slow process, but the basic idea was to build a strong farm system. But we are going to start working for one systematically. With Pennock teaching the young owner how to run a big-league baseball team, the two put their plan into action. And the farm system was built up to a level where the club soon had nine scouts and working agreements with 11 minor-league teams. But after two years there, they climbed to fifth in The team that year was made up mostly of veteran players including Schoolboy Rowe, Emil Verban , Johnny Wyrostek , and Skeeter Newsome , who had been picked up from other teams.

Their function was to make the club respectable until the youngsters arrived from the farms. Meanwhile, Carpenter lavished huge sums on young players. Bob would stop at nothing to sign a player he thought would help the Phillies, often outbidding some of the wealthier teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Cardinals. Simmons put on a dazzling show, nearly beating the Phillies. After the game, Carpenter treated all comers to a chicken dinner at the local fire hall. There was nothing bashful about Carpenter when it came to opening his checkbook.

As he later would demonstrate, that went for established players, too. Carpenter was, however, always attempting some positive change. In , Carpenter held a public contest to pick a new name. The winner was Blue Jays. The name, however, was never registered with the league office as an official nickname and, having never gained much acceptance, it was dropped as a secondary nickname in In Carpenter made headlines when he hired a woman scout, Edith Houghton.

A former softball star on the widely heralded Bobbies and a former Navy officer, she is believed to have been the first female scout in baseball. One year later, Carpenter set up spring-training camp in Clearwater, Florida, after decades of moving around the country.

More than 70 years later, the team was still there. Pennock died suddenly in , leaving Carpenter to run the club. When the senior Carpenter died a year later, Bob was strictly on his own. Sisler hit a 10th-inning game-winning home run to beat Brooklyn , and give the club the flag on the final day of the season.

Some of the stars of the Whiz Kids never approximated their performances again. Eddie Sawyer , the manager who had been so popular a few years earlier, fell out of favor in and was fired. And the team in general did a downhill slide from which it never recovered, even though Sawyer was brought back as manager in Philadelphia Phillies teammates carry Robin Roberts off the field following the inning pennant-clinching game on October 1, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

In the Phillies lost a major-league-record 23 straight games. It would be a disaster that was never forgotten by anyone who was around at that time.

Actually, that view was badly mistaken as the team had signed its first African-American, a player named Ted Washington of the Philadelphia Stars, in Others were signed in the years shortly thereafter, although the first black player to perform in an actual Phillies game did not occur until John Kennedy took the field in It was sometimes said that Roy Campanella , a Philadelphia native, would have preferred the Phillies to the Dodgers.

Al Kaline and Carl Yastrzemski could have worn Phillies uniforms, but got away. So did Hank Aaron. Carpenter was always somewhat preoccupied with big, strapping pitchers who could throw hard. One such pitcher the Phillies developed but let go in an ill-advised trade was Ferguson Jenkins , who became one of the outstanding hurlers in the major leagues and a Hall of Famer. It was just the reverse situation with Roberts.

The great right-hander, often rated by Carpenter as his number-one player, performed brilliantly year after year in Philadelphia, at one point winning 20 or more games in six straight years. Repeatedly Carpenter turned down trade offers for Roberts. Carpenter was like that. A generous man, he loaned money to many of his players who wanted to buy businesses or homes or who were simply short of cash. And he often took care of their expenses when they were ill or had problems.

When Waitkus was shot in by a deranged woman, Bob ordered the best available medical care. Then he paid for a winter of rehabilitation in Florida for Waitkus and trainer Frank Wiechec, one of the first full-time trainers in baseball. Carpenter could be a strict president. He was opposed to his players enjoying too much nightlife. When the postgame habits of some of the Phillies seemed to become a problem in , Bob and Hamey hired private detectives to follow them.

The tactic backfired when infielder Granny Hamner discovered that he was being trailed home after a game. Hamner called police who arrested the detective. Hamner exploded in a well-publicized tirade, demanding and subsequently getting an apology from Carpenter.

Bob could get mad himself. One famous outbreak occurred at spring training in The Boston Red Sox were visiting Clearwater for an exhibition game. Expecting to see the mighty Red Sox sluggers, a large crowd poured into the ballpark. When Carpenter learned this, he was irate.

Bob grabbed a microphone and announced to the fans that they could have their ticket money refunded. The gesture merely served to infuriate the Red Sox, especially McCarthy.

A near-brawl followed in which several Red Sox and Phillies officials almost engaged in a fistfight. Carpenter could throw his weight around when necessary. When A. Carpenter was heavily involved in the demise of Connie Mack Stadium the former Shibe Park as a major-league ballpark and the emergence of Veterans Stadium. Soon afterward, he began a campaign for a new ballpark. The Phillies continued to play there, while the campaign for a new ballpark staggered along.

Finally, with Carpenter, the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles, and others prodding the city, a new site was selected at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia. By then the Phillies had run the gamut from pennant winner to doormat to pennant contender to mediocrity. On November 22, , Bob announced that he was stepping out as president. His son, Ruly, became the chief executive, and Bob took the position of chairman of the board.

In his nine years as president of the Phillies, Robert R. Ruly was 3 when his father took over the team. He was 10 when the team won its second National League championship, but by the time he enrolled in Yale University, the team had reached bottom. At Yale, Ruly was a two-way end on the football team and captained the baseball team, on which he pitched and batted. Ruly had gone to New Haven with the idea of pursuing a career in law, but he changed his mind while at school.

In he joined the Phillies in the accounting department. By the spring of , he and then-scout Paul Owens worked together, evaluating the talent on the lowest minor-league teams in the Phillies chain. Later, Carpenter said he enjoyed player development more than anything else in baseball. Ruly became his assistant. The roots had been planted to turn the team around by developing players instead of trying to trade for them. In June Owens replaced John Quinn as general manager.

One month later, he fired Frank Lucchesi and named himself field manager, explaining that he had to see firsthand what his team was all about.

Ruly agreed totally with that philosophy. The Phillies won only 59 games in Ruly, at age 32, assumed the presidency after the season. Public relations director Larry Shenk had been hired by the team in and would hold that position until he retired in And public-address announcer Dan Baker would start in and after 46 years was still at work in , the second-longest PA stint in baseball history.

About the only thing they had going for them was the result of a trade. In the last major deal made by general manager Quinn, who had joined the team in , he talked the Cardinals into giving him Steve Carlton for Rick Wise. It was a deal that would forever stand as one of the best the Phillies ever made. But there were other problems. Before that season, baseball had undergone a massive change, and the Phillies were hugely affected. When Curt Flood was traded to the Phillies in , he challenged the reserve clause , which bound a player to a club as long as it wanted him.

The case went all the way to the U. Supreme Court. Eventually, free agency was born. Ruly hated it all. He admitted that things had not been right in the past, but that now they had swung the other way.

At first he refused to get into any auctions for players, preferring instead to sign his own stars like Schmidt and Greg Luzinski to lucrative long-term contracts. He believed the Phillies had developed the players and that they should enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Bowa, Bob Boone , and Dick Ruthven were among others who had grown up through the Phillies farm system. Eventually, they all took major roles on the team. But they lost in the League Championship Series each time. Then in , the Phillies signed Pete Rose.

That proved to be a brilliant move. They then won the first World Series in club history, beating the Kansas City Royals in six games with Carlton winning two games and McGraw winning one and saving two. But that was one day of happiness. There were too many other days of misery. On March 6, , Ruly Carpenter, having repeatedly complained about skyrocketing player salaries, made the announcement that stunned the baseball world.

The Phillies, he said, were up for sale. So, rather than continue to beat our heads against the wall, we have decided to sell. Courtesy of Getty Images. William Y. Giles had lived baseball since the day he was born. And he achieved his lifelong dream on October 29, , when a partnership he headed purchased the Phillies, ending nearly four decades of ownership by the Carpenter family.

The son of Warren Giles , a part-owner of the New York Yankees in the s, general manager and then president of the Cincinnati Reds in the s, and the National League president , Bill was born in Rochester, New York, in while his father was a minor-league executive. He got his first job in baseball as a summer employee of the Cincinnati Reds while he was attending Denison University.

In he joined the new Houston franchise as traveling secretary and publicity director. By , he was a vice president of the Astros. On October 10, , Giles joined the Carpenters and the Phillies as vice president of business operations, as the Phillies prepared to move from Connie Mack Stadium to Veterans Stadium.

Giles had been instrumental in the building of the Astrodome in Houston, and in he led the Phillies into the new Veterans Stadium. Three years later, Giles was elevated to executive vice president. Eventually, he would become universally recognized as one of the main reasons the Phillies changed their image from shabby losers to progressive winners through the s.

A masterful promoter, Giles launched numerous highly popular moves. He initiated the formation of the Phillie Phanatic, a team mascot that, played first by Dave Raymond and then Tom Burgoyne, became the most highly acclaimed mascot in the nation.

He had stuntman Karl Wallenda walk across the top of Veterans Stadium on a wire, and brought in such acts as Kiteman, Cannonman, Rocketman, Benny the Bomb, and the Playboy Bunnies to deliver the first ball at a game. He started the Hot Pants Patrol, a group of highly attractive, scantily clad young women who appeared on the field throughout a game and who served as ballgirls down the left- and right-field lines.

And he used parachute jumpers, trapeze riders, duck races, various other animal acts, and celebrities to entertain the fans either before or during games. Much of this came before Ruly Carpenter shocked the baseball world by announcing during spring training in that he was putting his world championship team up for sale.

Giles played a major role in running the team. Carpenter encouraged him to try to put together a group to buy it. Others were J.

None of the partners held as much as a 50 percent share of the limited partnership. His first team finished second to the world champion St. Louis Cardinals in the National League East. Nevertheless, the Phillies fell into fourth place in , attendance dropped, and the team was generally acknowledged to have slipped well into red ink. By , the Phillies drew a mere 1,, in attendance, the first time except for the strike-ridden season that the team had slipped below 2 million since Giles became the largest single stockholder in the club.

For five years, he and other members of the front office ran the baseball operation. Giles had also gotten some flak for trading away future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg in , and for breaking up the and championship teams, perhaps prematurely and with little in return. On the plus side, Giles was the man chiefly responsible for bringing the signing of Rose to fruition.

Giles made perhaps one of his boldest moves when he signed catcher Lance Parrish to a Phillies contract in At the time major-league owners, who would eventually be found guilty of collusion, were adamantly refusing to sign free agents.

Giles broke the logjam by signing Parrish, who had become a free agent after playing with the Detroit Tigers.

With Giles as president, the Phillies had seven managers. He had the team stage emotional retirement nights for future Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, who had won four Cy Young Awards with the Phillies, and Mike Schmidt, a three-time Most Valuable Player, as part of the numerous special events that were geared to building fan interest and making a Phillies game an entertaining event for fans.

His promotional skills and his ability to market a team and keep it popular despite less-than-satisfactory records on the field were hugely successful. Louis Cardinals. He was an eight-time Gold Glove winner and seven-time All-Star.

He's best remembered for his time with the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies. He previously managed the New York Yankees from , which included winning the World Series in He also managed the Phillies from With 12 games remaining, the Phillies led the St.

With the National League now divided into two divisions, the Phillies made the NL championship game three times in a row from to , but fell short of a World Series spot on each occasion.

The star-studded team finally broke nearly a century of Phillies underachievement in with a six-game World Series victory over the Kansas City Royals. The aging team returned to the World Series in , falling in five games to the Baltimore Orioles, but the 25 years that followed marked a low-point in Philadelphia sports. The Phillies suffered a two decades rut interrupted only by the magical season.

A group of rowdy, shaggy haired players such as John Kruk and Lenny Dykstra, led by starting pitcher Curt Schilling, captivated a victory-starved city, seizing an improbable NL East pennant, but falling at the final hurdle with a World Series loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. The team did not disappoint. With a new generation of home-grown talent—MVPs Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, star second baseman Chase Utley, and ace pitcher Cole Hamels—fulfilling their potential, the Phillies have not had a losing season in their new home [ed: until ].