Ninety days in the past, the San Diego Padres closed inside one sport of eliminating the Dodgers within the Nationwide League Division Sequence. On their march to the World Sequence championship, the Dodgers had survived their hardest check by the hands of the Padres. One of the best rivalry in baseball would endure.
On Monday, in a bombshell lawsuit, the widow of beloved Padres proprietor Peter Seidler steered the Padres themselves won’t endure, not less than not in San Diego.
Sheel Seidler, the widow, desires to take management of the workforce and stated in a court docket submitting {that a} cause Seidler’s brothers have prevented her from doing so “may well be … efforts to sell, and perhaps relocate, the team, over Sheel’s strident objections.”
In a lawsuit filed in Travis County (Tex.) probate court docket, Sheel Seidler alleged two of his brothers have “misappropriated and misused” the property of Peter Seidler, who died in 2023. She additional alleged the brothers “treat the team as their own plaything to be passed back and forth on a whim.”
In a press release on social media Monday, Sheel Seidler stated she filed go well with “as a very last resort” and “the best way to protect the Padres franchise.”
A workforce spokesman stated the Padres “do not comment on pending legal matters.”
Peter Seidler, a nephew of former Dodgers proprietor Peter O’Malley, reinvented the Padres as a powerhouse unwilling to be outlined by its small market. The star-studded Padres, that includes the likes of Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Yu Darvish, bought out two-thirds of their dwelling video games final season and bought extra tickets than any workforce in addition to the Dodgers, New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies.
In 2023-24, the primary winter after Peter Seidler’s loss of life, the Padres traded Juan Soto and deserted Blake Snell and Josh Hader in free company. This winter, the Padres haven’t signed a significant league free agent from exterior the group.
Final month, the Padres introduced that Peter’s older brother, John, would turn into the workforce’s controlling proprietor. In a press release, the workforce described John Seidler as “an accomplished entrepreneur and business executive.” John Seidler will not be one of many two brothers named as a defendant within the lawsuit.
Within the go well with, Sheel Seidler stated John Seidler is a civil engineer with “no ties to the San Diego community” and no ties to the Padres past a small possession stake that Peter Seidler “enabled him to acquire” and a son who labored as a workforce photographer.
She alleged the 2 brothers serving as trustees for the Seidler property are “trying to erase Peter’s vision and legacy, as well as falsely cast themselves as Peter’s true heirs.”
She added: “The emphasis in the press reports on the Padres cutting salary, lowering their expectations, and implicitly abandoning their all-out pursuit of a World Series championship would have been a gut punch to Peter.”
Sheel Seidler claimed that the spouse of one of many brothers had made racist feedback about her. She alleged the brothers’ “actions to wrest control of the Padres were undertaken to force Sheel — a woman, an interloper, and an Indian American woman not of O’Malley descent from what [those brothers] saw as their family business and ancestral right.”
The lawsuit will activate whether or not a court docket finds the 2 brothers named as defendants correctly and pretty carried out Peter Seidler’s needs. Sheel Seidler cited quite a few situations of her involvement with the Padres — together with conferences with agent Scott Boras — and claimed Peter Seidler had stated earlier than his loss of life that he wished his spouse to run the workforce.
In her submitting Monday, Sheel Seidler cited no proof of any plans to promote the workforce, or to maneuver it out of San Diego. Nonetheless, in a metropolis that had its coronary heart torn out by the Chargers transferring to Los Angeles, Peter Seidler put collectively a corporation that made it doable for San Diego to like big-time sports activities as soon as once more.
For now, although, we’ve got to wonder if the Padres’ Camelot Period might need ended 90 days in the past.
