More than a year after owner Peter Seidler’s death, the San Diego Padres are involved in a fight over who should run the team, which is typical of their 56-year history replete with multiple ownership hassles and off-field controversies.
A lawsuit filed this week over control of the franchise has raised the specter of a sale, and a dispute over the possibility of relocation. It’s also highlighted the issues the team faces on the field.
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The question of who controls the team is the subject of litigation filed by Peter’s widow, Sheel Seidler, in Texas this week.
The crux of the complaint is that Sheel wants to be the club’s control person dealing with Major League Baseball about all club matters. She contends in the 97-page complaint that Seidler’s brothers, Matt and Bob, the current and former trustees of Peter’s estate, respectively, won’t allow her to do it.
As it stands, the Padres are without a control person and dealing with big issues over their expensive roster. They have been rudderless since Seidler’s friend and business partner Eric Kutsenda stepped down from the interim control spot last month. John Seidler, the brother of Matt and Bob, was named to fill that position, and he still hasn’t been approved by MLB.
Peter Seidler left the Padres top-heavy with salaries in his quest to win a World Series, which has limited the team this offseason. They currently have a seventh-in-MLB player outlay of $189.9 million when including the luxury tax, according to Spotrac, and no remaining regional sports network in place.
Among the incendiary claims in the complaint, Sheel’s attorneys wrote: “Indeed, Matt’s efforts to promote his brother John as Control Person and to block Sheel may well be part of his efforts to sell, and perhaps, relocate, the team, over Sheel’s strident objections.”
A response letter from Matt Seidler to Padres fans denied that a move from San Diego is on the table.
“This is completely false,” he said. “It is also laughable—the San Diego fans are the best in baseball, and Petco Park is the best ballpark in MLB.”
The fact is, a move by the Padres can’t be contemplated by contract with the city of San Diego until 2034, 30 years after the ballpark opened, or until the city’s bond debt is scheduled to be retired in 2032.
The Padres have two options to extend the lease by five years each.
All this is memorialized in the original Memorandum of Understanding signed by the San Diego officials and the Padres before construction began in the early 2000s.
“The Padres will be prohibited from relocating the Padres’ franchise to a location other than San Diego, or from playing home games at any facility other than the Ballpark except as expressly provided herein and except for temporary relocation necessitated by casualty damage to the Ballpark, for the duration of any agreement for occupancy of the Ballpark between the Padres and the City,” the document states.
The total construction price of the venue in the East Village neighborhood of San Diego was $474 million, with the Padres, under then-owner John Moores, shouldering $150 million of the cost. Moores was responsible for the separate and extensive build-out around the ballpark and still is in control of much of the property in that area.
Thus, the city owns 70% of the ballpark with 30% controlled by the Padres. While the team pays $500,000 a year in rent, it operates and maintains the facility. Moores sold the club to Seidler in 2012, and since then the Seidler family has put millions of dollars into upgrading, maintaining and expanding the original edifice.
According to MLB regulations, any money invested by a club into its facility is exempt from revenue sharing, so there’s little apparent incentive for the Padres to relocate even if they could.
The Padres have long been plagued by ownership issues; the soap opera landscape was once described in a 1989 Sports Illustrated piece entitled, “All My Padres.”
The franchise’s first owner after expansion into the National League in 1969, C. Arnholt Smith, tried unsuccessfully to move the team to Washington, D.C., in 1973. Smith, a banker, ultimately went to jail for contempt of court.
Ray Kroc, head of the McDonald’s empire, saved the team for San Diego, but he died after suffering a debilitating stroke prior to the 1984 season, when the team made it to its first World Series, losing in five games to the Detroit Tigers.
His wife, Joan, inherited the club, and spent the following years trying to unload it, finally selling the team in 1990 to Los Angeles television producer and current Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner and more than a dozen local San Diego investors. When they found the cost too rich for their blood, Werner’s group traded their top players and sold the team to Moores and his partners for $80 million in the wake of the player’s strike that wiped out the end of the 1994 season.
Moores and the late Larry Lucchino built the team back to contenders. They were swept by the New York Yankees in the 1998 World Series, just before a resounding, but non-binding public vote in favor of building the new ballpark. Lucchino was subsequently fired before a shovel could be placed in the ground to build the new yard, which was delayed for several years by 16 lawsuits.
Moores wound up having to sell the team in a divorce dispute with his former wife, Becky.
Now, another episode of “All My Padres” is playing out. The effort to make John Seidler the control person for the franchise must be approved by a 75% vote of the 30 MLB owners. The matter is pending and will no doubt be held up by the lawsuit.
Matt’s letter to fans tried to make the case for his brother—and against Sheel.
“Peter had many conversations with Bob, John, and me regarding the Control Person role, including identifying those family members he considered to be potential candidates for this position, and consistently reaffirmed his confidence in each of us, if and when the time came for any of us to designate the Padres’ Control Person,” the letter said. “Peter never mentioned Sheel as a potential candidate for Control Person to Bob, John, or me.”
It looks like the long-running soap won’t be canceled anytime soon.
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