The Padres' playoff run is shaped by the legacy of late owner Peter Seidler

SAN DIEGO – As the San Diego Padres celebrate during another playoff run, the long shadow of late owner Peter Seidler hangs over Petco Park.

Seidler died last November at the age of 63. His widow Sheel said this week the cause was an infection unrelated to his long battle with cancer. His immune system was weakened. Seidler built the Padres and was still very much alive two years ago when they were on the verge of a World Series trip before falling to the Philadelphia Phillies in a five-game National League Championship Series.

A lasting memory of him was captured by a photographer as he cheered in the rain after the Padres defeated the hated Los Angeles Dodgers in a four-game NL Division Series in the postseason.

The Padres will face the Dodgers again in the NLDS on Saturday night in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium after knocking the Atlanta Braves out of their Wild Card Series with a narrow 5-4 win in Game 2 on Wednesday night at Petco Park.

As the game ended with the Padres celebrating around the mound, the record crowd of 47,705 began the ritual chant of “Beat LA!” Beat LA!”

Given that this is Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani's first playoff series, it's going to be wild.

When Seidler died, the Padres' reconstituted ownership group vowed to continue the mission and win the club's first World Series. They've been there twice, the last time 26 years ago when they were defeated by the New York Yankees at the old Qualcomm Stadium.

What is the significance of Seidler's memory? When general manager AJ Preller was asked about it on Tuesday before the Wild Card Series opened, he began to cry. His eyes didn't just fill with tears. He didn't just choke. He cried openly.

“Personally, not a day goes by that I don’t think about Peter,” said Preller when he had regained his composure. “His vision and what we achieve. I think about it a lot.”

The season began with a beautiful memorial service for Seidler on the Petco field. This playoff run is a different kind of monument.

“This is a joy,” Sheel Seidler said as she looked around the stadium. “I miss him every day, but hearing other people talk about him is very healing for me.”

Fernando Tatis Jr. opened the series with a two-run home run shot into the left field seats in the first inning as the Padres won Game 1 4-0. Like the rest of the club, he wears a gold patch on his uniform with the brown initials PS in the middle. The patch, designed by Sheel, was ubiquitous around the 20-year-old ballpark.

Tatis expressed the same feelings about Seidler.

“What he asked of the city and the love he had for all of us was just unconditional,” Tatis said. “We definitely do that for him, and we definitely put more pressure on him, especially for me.

“And every step I take in my career here in San Diego, he will definitely be on my right shoulder and show up in every single special moment.”

Tatis said that when he hit his lowest point in 2022, Seidler never gave up on him. There was a drug ban. Surgery on a dislocated left shoulder. Two more surgeries on a broken left wrist, an injury stemming from an offseason motorcycle accident in his native Dominican Republic.

Tatis was in recovery and inactive during his club's surprising playoff run in 2022. Due to the 80-game performance-enhancing drug suspension, he was not on the playoff squad.

“Me and Peter definitely had a relationship, something that probably no one knew about,” Tatis recalled. “When I had surgery and got my suspension, Peter sat at my house a few times in the afternoon. And we had nice conversations about what the team would look like in the next three years, the next five years, the next 10 years.”

That time is now. This year's team finished with a 93-69 record, second only to the 98-64 mark of the 1998 Padres, who, oddly enough, defeated the Braves in the NL Championship Series to win their second NL pennant.

This isn't your grandfather's San Diego. Team attendance this season was 3.3 million, surpassing last year's record by almost 100,000. The previous peak was just over 3 million in 2004, the year the ballpark opened. Viewership was just 2.2 million in 2021 due to the pandemic, when fan presence was still partially limited due to health and safety protocols.

The NFL's Chargers left San Diego for LA in 2017, leaving the Padres as the remaining major league professional sports team. Seidler's investments in player payroll and stadium improvements were welcomed by fans.

“When he bought the team, he always mentioned the passion of the fans,” Sheel Seidler said. “He started to realize that San Diego had such a passionate fan base. If you give them a competitor, he knew that would happen.”

Despite a decline in total payroll, from the third-highest total in Major League Baseball last year at $291.1 million to the 11th-best this season at $228.7 million, and an offseason in which the club signed superstar Juan Soto was transferred to the Bronx, the fans continued to buy in.

The Padres increased their local revenue from $315 million in 2021 to $427 million in 2023, also ranked 11th in the league, according to the data SporticoOwn assessments. And that number will certainly be even higher this season. Seidler's group bought the team from John Moores in 2012 for $800 million. In 2020 he took over majority ownership. The franchise is now worth $2.03 billion.

“It’s Southern California. “It’s a great fan base,” Preller said. “They’re really into baseball. But you also have to bring a product to market that excites people and makes them feel like you can win.”

This is only the seventh time in the club's history that it has made the playoffs in a full season. The Padres are 1-8 in World Series games, having also lost in five games to the Detroit Tigers in 1984.

Hexes are meant to be broken. Just ask the Boston Red Sox in 2004 and the Chicago Cubs in 2016. Both teams were losers for a long time, long before the Padres were on everyone's lips.

The thought of winning an award in memory of Peter Seidler in San Diego this year is inescapable.

“It’s in our structure, the structure of the clubhouse, the structure of the organization, and rightly so,” first-year manager Mike Shildt said. “It's a part of us because he set the bar high, but he also showed the way…to care for each other and love each other, to be a part of the community.”

As the Padres look to make history, “Peter is with us in spirit,” Shildt said, “and he is with us in his legacy of what he left us to uphold.”