The Profoundly Positive Impact of Peter Seidler
The passing of the Padres owner leaves a void in the community
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News broke Tuesday that Peter Seidler, owner and chairman of the Padres, had passed away at the age of 63. The outpouring of love, respect, and appreciation that followed was immediate and has yet to slow down.
Seidler rescued San Diego from years of empty promises and small-market excuses. The enthusiasm with which he invested in the city breathed life into a sports-loving community that had grown accustomed to disappointment.
The grandson of Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, Seidler was committed to the people of San Diego.
“He was the nicest man on the planet,” says Matt Williams, who served as the Padres third base coach for the past two seasons before joining the Giants coaching staff earlier this month.
The San Diego sports world needed stability. The city was blessed with a hero.
“The thing that I come away with is how caring he was about everybody,” Williams says. “Beyond that, it felt like he cared about you. Not just me but everybody. He was always willing to stop and talk.”
The energy and passion Seidler devoted to addressing the city’s challenges around homelessness and the compassion he showed the unhoused population in San Diego was well documented. It went hand-in-hand with his desire to produce a championship team.
“He was a huge fan and a man on a mission to make the Padres as good as they could possibly be,” the third base coach says.
Williams was diagnosed with colon cancer this past Spring Training. (He’s now cancer free.) Seidler had defeated non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma twice. “We shared a little bit of kinship,” Williams said about their diagnoses. “We spoke about that.”
It was cancer, strangely enough, that earlier this year provided Williams a window to the ways in which Seidler quietly tended to humanity.
Williams was pulling out of his apartment building’s garage in downtown San Diego. It was around 6:30 in the morning. He was on his way to a doctor’s appointment. “There he is,” Williams says, referring to Seidler, “walking up and down the sidewalk, picking up trash. It was astonishing. There was nobody there… he’s just doing it because he wants to. This man cared about San Diego, he cared about his team, he cared about trying to help the homeless.”
Williams stopped his car to confirm that, indeed, it was the Padres owner. “He was picking up any trash that was around.”
It’s often said that the true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching.
“He’s one of those guys who actually lived it,” Williams says.
I want to conclude by sharing the eloquent words of Yu Darvish, who offered the following on social media on Tuesday:
My heart hurts with the unfortunate news of Peter Seidler’s passing. I’m sure everyone that knew him would agree with me when I say Peter was a truly wonderful human being, and being in his presence was always a blessing. He was a teacher of life, and taught me countless lessons from all the interactions we had. May his beautiful soul rest in peace.
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What a lovely tribute to such a special man.