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With Padres, Peter Seidler distinguished himself in many ways as the ideal owner

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Peter Seidler, a man who often walked around with a baseball in his hands, who dressed more modestly than his employees and who spent unprecedented amounts of money in a small media market, was unlike any other major league franchise owner. He distinguished himself from the start by the way he entered that exclusive club.

In an interview two years ago, Seidler recalled being “locked in my house” in late 2011. That year, he had begun undergoing chemotherapy and other home treatments for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He recalled feeling “OK” physically and being “terribly bored.” A freeway baseball team owned by the then Los Angeles resident happened to be for sale. So Seidler, a successful private equity investor and member of the family that moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Chavez Ravine, asked for more information about the San Diego Padres.

Curiosity quickly turned to determination.

“That hit me when I looked at the materials,” Seidler said in the 2021 interview. “With my background in private equity, I’ve seen and been a part of a lot of great companies. But one thing about professional sports: To reiterate what I first heard from Commissioner (Bud) Selig: baseball is a social institution, and it always has been. I believe this is America’s pastime to this day, and the impact the San Diego Padres can have on the city and county of San Diego is like no other company can have. And I thought that was important.”

Seidler died Tuesday morning. He was 63. He will be remembered as an owner who indeed treated the Padres as a social institution, who elevated the franchise to unprecedented prominence and who distinguished himself to the end.

“Peter was probably the most positive person I knew,” Ron Fowler, who bought the Padres with Seidler in 2012, said Tuesday afternoon. “To say he saw the cup as half full is probably an incorrect statement. I think he saw it was almost three-quarters full. He saw the possibilities, the advantage of everything.

“He always said things could be solved, otherwise ‘this will happen.’ He was just extremely positive about the way he looked at people, problems, everything. He always saw the good. I think that’s the way he was in relationships, that’s the way he did business, and it obviously served him well.”

In an industry known for its pursuit of cold, hard profits, Seidler was a beloved figure even as he helped transform Petco Park into one of baseball’s most popular destinations. Several years ago, he emerged even more encouraged after a second battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The Padres then signed Eric Hosmer to the franchise’s first nine-figure contract. They signed Manny Machado to San Diego’s first $300 million deal – easily the largest pact in North American sports history – and later retained Machado with a $350 million contract. They demonstrated Seidler’s desire to win, time and time again, with similarly lucrative commitments to Fernando Tatis Jr., Joe Musgrove, Yu Darvish and Xander Bogaerts. They processed the franchise’s first nine-figure payrolls, including $249 million last opening day. (In 2012, months before Seidler and Fowler bought the team, the Padres had a payroll of $55 million.)

Seidler’s big swings led to high-profile failures in 2019, 2021 and 2023, but his resolve remained intact throughout. His escalating financial expenses proved that. His health problems formed the basis for his approach. And his efforts off the field provided even more evidence.

Addressing homelessness in San Diego became Seidler’s personal mission. Some of those efforts were known to the public, such as his founding of the ‘Tuesday Group’ and his involvement in the Lucky Duck Foundation. Some of his efforts were more private. For example, Seidler made a habit of taking long walks late at night not far from the San Diego coast. Along the way, he stopped regularly to talk to the homeless – to listen and gain a better understanding of one of the community’s biggest crises.

“He was passionate about it,” Fowler said. “Once I said, ‘Peter, I think it is the government’s responsibility to do this fairly. … It sometimes seems to be one step forward and sometimes two steps back. But you have to have a positive attitude.’ Otherwise I think he would find it very frustrating, but he just kept going after it.”

The Padres, of course, were Seidler’s full-time project. His passion was evident even before he bought the team. When Fowler and Seidler first met in person in early 2012, the latter had recently completed cancer treatment. He looked so weak that Fowler wondered if Seidler would need immediate medical attention. Still, Seidler proved undeterred, taking methodical notes on a notebook as he spoke with Fowler, an existing minority owner of the Padres.

“My thought was, why is he trying to buy a baseball team now? Why isn’t he trying to recover?” Fowler said. “But he wanted to buy a baseball team.”

Around the same time, Seidler attended his first game at Petco Park. In the 2021 interview, he recalled the weight he lost from chemotherapy. He remembered feeling cold.

He also recalled being captivated by the beauty of the ballpark and the surrounding city, a city that had never celebrated a major sports championship. He remembered feeling inspired.

“That might have been the moment I got serious,” Seidler later recalled.

In the years that followed, Seidler repeatedly proved his commitment. Along the way he befriended the man who built Petco Park. They bonded over shared experiences.

“He wanted to win because he was a great athlete, and great athletes want to win,” said former Padres president and CEO Larry Lucchino, himself a survivor of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “But he undoubtedly wanted to do something for the city.

“He was a remarkable baseball man and an even more remarkable human being, and I am angry that he was taken from us so soon.”

Peter Seidler never got to experience what he wanted most: San Diego’s first major sports championship. But Tuesday, as Fowler and Lucchino and others in the baseball world paid tribute to a man who treated the Padres as a social institution, Seidler’s legacy was clear: In some ways, he was the ideal owner.

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(Photo of Seidler: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

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