Terry Seidler obit

Terry Seidler, mother of former and current Padres chairmen, dies at 92

She was not on the list.

Therese “Terry” Seidler, the mother of two San Diego Padres chairmen and a woman who at times in her life owned shares of two Major League Baseball teams, died on Thursday. Seidler was a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers for nearly two decades before selling the club in 1998; she owned a small share of the Padres at the time of her death. In a statement, the family said: “Terry Seidler, the matriarch of the Seidler family, passed away on December 18 at the age of 92. Terry's father Walter and brother Peter led the O'Malley family stewardship of the Brooklyn / L.A. Dodgers from 1950-1998. Terry became part owner of the San Diego Padres when her son Peter led the effort to purchase the Padres in 2012. She became an avid Padres fan and attended games regularly at Petco Park, cheering on the Padres in her brown & gold." Terry Seidler inherited half of the Dodgers along with her brother in 1979. The family sold the team in 1998. Peter Seidler was the Padres chairman from November 2020 until his death in November 2023. His brother, John, became chairman in March. The family announced in November that it is exploring a sale of the team. Terry Seidler, who taught Sunday school well into her 80s, was preceded in death by her husband, Rollie, who died in 2006. She is survived by nine of her 10 children, all of her 32 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

She was one of a few women to serve as the principal owner of a Major League Baseball team, inheriting half the team after the death of her father Walter O'Malley.

Born Therese "Terry" O'Malley in New York City on May 16, 1933, she was the eldest child of Katherine "Kay" (née Hanson) and Walter O'Malley. Her younger brother, Peter, was born in 1937. She spent her early life split between Amityville, New York, and Brooklyn.

O'Malley attended Froebel Academy and graduated from St. Francis Xavier Academy in Brooklyn. She enrolled in College of New Rochelle where she was elected freshman class president and Mission Queen as a senior, played basketball and softball and was a member of the student council in 1953–1954. In Amityville, she was a member of the Narrasketuck Yacht Club where she took part in sailboat racing. Her hobbies also included ice-skating and swimming.

Upon graduating from college, O'Malley served as executive secretary for the Dodgertown Summer Camp for Boys in Vero Beach, Florida, for three summers. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, O'Malley moved to California with her family. She worked as her father's personal secretary.

After marriage to Roland Seidler, Terry devoted herself to her family. In 1978, she returned to the Dodgers executive office and served on their Board of Directors. She and Peter O'Malley, who had been serving as President of the team for a few years, inherited the team outright upon the death of their father in 1979. In 1981, Seidler was named secretary of the Dodgers Board of Directors in 1981, continuing in that role through 1998,[1] when the O'Malley's sold the team to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

On the 50th anniversary of the opening of Dodger Stadium, April 10, 2012, Seidler threw out the ceremonial first pitch. On the stadium's inaugural opening day, her mother Kay had thrown the ceremonial first pitch.