Karen Carpenter was born at Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut on March 2, 1950 to Agnes Reuwer Tatum and Harold Bertram Carpenter. She played baseball a lot, and said that she liked being the pitcher. She had a brother, named Richard Carpenter. While Karen played baseball with her friends, Richard usually played the piano. Her parents, Agnes and Harold Carpenter, decided that they wanted to move to Downey, California, a city near Hollywood. They moved in 1963.