009_Salvation_came_from_the_Carpenter_family_wealthy_DuPont-conn

The Carpenter family saved the Phillies in 1943, holding a contest to rename the team to Blue Jays. The team's success was due to young talents like Richie Ashburn and Robin Roberts. The Whiz Kids won the pennant in 1950. In 1964, a big collapse happened, but the team rose again in the 1970s with players like Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton. In 1980, led by Schmidt and Carlton, the Phillies won their first World Series. The parade drew over two million fans. Salvation came from the Carpenter family, wealthy DuPont-connected owners who bought the Phillies in 1943 and installed a 28-year-old Bob Carpenter as team president, the youngest in National League history. Carpenter was so desperate to shake the losing reputation attached to the Phillies name that he ran a newspaper contest asking fans to suggest a new one. More than 5,000 entries came in. The winner was Blue Jays. The team actually used the logo on hats and stationery for a few years, but never officially dropped Phillies. The name that outlasted everything else nearly didn't survive its own front office. What actually turned the franchise around wasn't a new name. It was young talent. Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts, Kurt Simmons signed and developed through the farm system Carpenter built. By 1950, that young core, nicknamed the Whiz Kids, won the pennant in dramatic fashion, needing a three-run, tenth-inning home run on the final day of the season just to clinch it. They lost the World Series to the Yankees in a sweep, but for the first time in over three decades, the Phillies were relevant again. The next big moment was also one of the most painful in the franchise's history. In 1964, the Phillies held a six-and-a-half-game lead with just twelve games left to play and lost ten straight, blowing the pennant in what's remembered as one of the worst collapses in sports history. It took another decade for the next great era to arrive, and this one stuck. Homegrown stars like Larry Boa and Bob Boone were joined by a converted shortstop turned third baseman who almost went into architecture instead of baseball, Mike Schmidt. In 1972, the Phillies traded away a popular pitcher to acquire Steve Carlton, a move that looked questionable until Carlton went twenty-seven and ten on his way to four Cy Young Awards for a team that only won fifty-nine games total that year. Schmidt and Carlton, the Phillies built a genuine contender through the mid-to-late 1970s, making the playoffs three years running, only to lose each time. Then in 1980, with Schmidt leading the league in home runs and RBIs and Carlton anchoring the rotation, the Phillies finally broke through, beating the Houston Astros in a legendary five-game series that saw four extra-inning games, then defeating the Kansas City Royals to win their first World Series championship in franchise history. Seven years after that first disastrous 17-81 season, under a manager nicknamed Death to Flying Things, more than two million fans lined Broad Street to watch the parade.