Feb. 9, 1943: Fed up with the constant financial troubles at the Philadelphia Phillies, the National League takes the team away from hapless owner Gerry Nugent. The league pays about $500,000 for Nugent’s shares and assumes $300,000 in debt amassed by the Phutile Phils—so-called because the owner had been selling off his best players in an effort to pay the bills, which had been piling up at the same rate as the team’s losses. After three months of trying to find a buyer, the league sells the Phillies to William Cox, a former Olympic rower. Cox’s reign lasted about nine months, ending when Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned him from baseball for life after finding that Cox had bet on Phillies games. The team was again sold, this time to Robert Carpenter, whose family owned it until 1982. Cox was never reinstated and was the last baseball figure to suffer such punishment until Pete Rose was banned, also for gambling, in 1989. Rose, of course, played for Phillies from 1979 to 1983. To their credit, though, Cox and Rose also share the distinction of never having been banned from water polo.—Jeffrey Kanige
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