Sports
Shaikin: In San Diego, an ownership dispute tests the belief of a great Padres fan base
SAN DIEGO — In 2009, as the couple that owned the Dodgers announced their separation, the attorney for Frank McCourt said he did not anticipate a legal battle over the team. The attorney said documents would prove the Dodgers were owned solely by McCourt, not jointly by the couple, and said there was “not a chance” the team would be put up for sale.
“Speculation about a potential sale of the team is rubbish,” attorney Marshall Grossman said then. “Frank McCourt is the sole owner. He has absolutely no intention of selling this team now or ever.”
The documents did not hold up in court. McCourt did sell the team — but not for another three years, a span in which the Dodgers did not make the playoffs, were outdrawn by the Angels for the first and only time, and were outspent one season by the Minnesota Twins.
On Saturday, as the Dodgers showed off their superstar-studded roster at Dodger Stadium, the Padres staged a fan festival of their own. The new year here started ominously: Sheel Seidler, the widow of beloved owner Peter Seidler, ignited a legal battle over whether she or one of Peter Seidler’s brothers should properly be running the Padres.
The Padres set a franchise record for attendance last year and already have sold out of season tickets this year. They boasted what we thought was the second-best team in the major leagues last season, and on Saturday fans proudly wore the jerseys of the core of what remains a very good team: Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado; Jackson Merrill and Luis Arraez and Jake Cronenworth; Yu Darvish and Michael King and Dylan Cease.
And then there was the guy walking around the outfield in a Mookie Betts jersey. Gavyn Wolf lives here, so he came with his friends, dodging the jeering.
“I refuse to wear anything Padres,” he said.
So who’s going to win the National League West this season?
“Who else is taking it?” he said.
His friend, Jack Endicott, shrugged. He couldn’t disagree.
“The Padres haven’t made any moves,” he said.
The Dodgers brought back Teoscar Hernández and Blake Treinen and brought in Roki Sasaki and Blake Snell and Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates and Hyeseong Kim and Michael Conforto.
The Padres brought back their backup catcher.
“Are we disappointed we haven’t made any moves?” Machado said Saturday. “Yeah.”
San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller gestures and smiles before a wild-card playoff game against the Atlanta Braves on Oct. 1.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
Padres general manager A.J. Preller last winter traded Juan Soto for King, who brilliantly replaced Snell in the starting rotation after working as a swingman for the New York Yankees. Merrill jumped from double-A into the Padres’ outfield and should have won NL rookie of the year honors.
Preller said Saturday he wants to add a bat “or two” and a starting pitcher “or two.” And, by this time last year, the Padres had not added Arraez, Cease or Jurickson Profar, who was an All-Star outfielder.
Profar, who led the Padres with an .839 OPS last season, signed as a free agent with the Atlanta Braves. He said he was interested in returning to San Diego.
“Obviously the Padres have some issue with the ownership and all that,” Profar told reporters.
That explained the trepidation in the air at Petco Park on Saturday. Good team, great fans, best ballpark in Southern California – but is an ownership dispute going to paralyze the franchise?
Two springs ago, I sat in the passenger seat of a golf cart at the Padres’ training complex in Peoria, Ariz. Peter Seidler sat in the driver’s seat.
He wanted to emphasize he was spending lavishly to build a foundation to challenge the Dodgers year in and year out, not to pump up the payroll and attendance and then sell the team.
“Myself and my family, we will own this franchise for the next 50, 75 years,” he told me, “hopefully more.”
When Frank and Jamie McCourt split up, they both insisted the Dodgers would stay in the family, no matter what else happened. Then the two torched one another in court rather than privately negotiate a settlement, and now the family no longer owns any part of the team.
In San Diego, the torching has begun.
San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler speaks during a Padres Hall of Fame ceremony at Petco Park in July 2023. Seidler died in November 2023.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
In her initial court filing, Sheel Seidler accused the Seidler brothers of “greed and betrayal” by enriching themselves with money that should have been hers, of allegedly painting Peter as “a cowboy who was irresponsible with the Padres payroll,” and tolerating her only so long as Peter was alive.
“After Peter died, they took off their masks and showed their true faces,” her filing read.
In his initial filing, Matt Seidler — one of the brothers — blamed Sheel for “recklessly” torpedoing the Padres’ pursuit of Sasaki by baselessly suggesting the brothers might move the team from San Diego and ridiculed her desire to run the Padres because her business experience allegedly is limited to “a brief legal career and her operation of a single yoga studio.”
According to Matt Seidler’s filing, “The crux of this case is Sheel’s pursuit of two things that Peter intentionally chose not to give her: control and unlimited money.”
The longer this goes and uglier this gets, the less the chance of the Padres staying in the Seidler family, no matter who might control the team.
As a strong team with a terrific ballpark in a market with no other major league teams, the Padres would attract bidders. That would come later, perhaps years later. Until there is some resolution to the court case, potential bidders would not know who the legal seller might be.
The Seidler brothers say this is not an issue. They have “no plans to sell the Padres to anyone,” according to a person familiar with their thinking who declined to be identified. They believe their documents will hold up in court.
In the Dodgers’ case, Jamie McCourt hired an investment banker to assemble a potential ownership group, in an effort to get Frank to sell her the team. In the end, Frank McCourt agreed to settle the divorce by paying Jamie $131 million, and she relinquished any claim to the Dodgers.
Frank McCourt then sold the team for $2 billion.
In her court filing, Sheel Seidler said she had assembled “an impressive roster of individuals with significant baseball and business experience to serve as advisors and executives” with the Padres and said she was concerned the brothers would sell the team.
So has she assembled a roster of financial backers to try to buy out the Seidler brothers? Dane Butswinkas, her counsel, declined to say.
“Ideally, we would like to resolve this with the brothers,” Butswinksas said. “However, for that to occur, it would take some level of cooperation from them. So far, we have seen no signs of that happening.
“The current path towards resolution, unfortunately, is through litigation, which we know can drag on for years and would be in no one’s interest.”
When the McCourts divorced, the lawyer for Frank McCourt wanted to make one point perfectly clear. The contemporaneous divorce of Padres owner John Moores had left the team a mess — he had to sell the team to resolve the divorce — and the Dodgers would not be a mess.
“This is not going to be another San Diego-like debacle,” Grossman said.
Here’s hoping there is not going to be another San Diego-like debacle in San Diego. The best rivalry in baseball deserves better. The people who run the Padres every day, and the people who root for them every day, deserve better.
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After a slow first round at Aronimink Golf Club in Philadelphia on Thursday, pace of play was a point of emphasis at the PGA Championship on Friday.
However, when an official approached Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley, they became animated.
Thomas, a longtime Team USA Ryder Cup member, and Bradley, last year’s United States captain, were on the fourth hole when they were approached by an official in a cart, and the conversation quickly turned into finger-pointing.
Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley watch from the tenth green during the second round of the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on May 15, 2026. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Thomas said after the round that he, Bradley and fellow USA Ryder Cupper Cameron Young, who won the Cadillac Championship earlier this month, were put on the clock, with the official telling them to pick up the pace. However, both Bradley and Thomas appeared to point at the group in front of them.
“We just didn’t really agree with it,” Thomas said, citing course conditions, high winds and tough pins. “We were behind. That wasn’t our issue… It’s just the fact that we weren’t holding up the group behind us.”
Thomas said they were caught up with the pace on the very next hole.
Justin Thomas plays his shot on the 15th tee during the second round of the PGA Championship in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, on May 15, 2026. (Bill Streicher/Imagn Images)
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Thomas had a lengthy conversation with the official, while Bradley appeared to make his point short and sweet — though he was definitely not happy with the call.
It is a large PGA Championship field, with 156 golfers at the course and groups even starting their rounds on the back nine. The scores have also been rather high, with just 25 players below par at the time of publishing.
Aronimink also features a shared tee box on 1 and 10, holes 9 and 17 crossing paths, and a lengthy par-3 eighth hole that’s causing problems. Three par-3s are over 200 yards on the course, and there is also a 457-yard par 4 on the fourth.
Keegan Bradley prepares to putt on the 14th green during the first round of the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, on May 14, 2026. (Bill Streicher/Imagn Images)
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As Chris Gotterup put it on Friday, “You’re not going to get any four-and-a-half hour rounds out here.”
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The Sparks are finally in the win column, but the outcome was in doubt late Friday night.
Behind double-digit scoring from all five starters, the Sparks had by far their best offensive showing of the season, shooting 63.8% during a 99-95 win over the expansion Toronto Tempo.
The Tempo didn’t make things easy, cutting the deficit to two points late and later trailing by just three with 31 seconds remaining and possession of the ball. Marina Mabrey missed a three-point attempt before late Tempo fouls gave the Sparks enough of a cushion to win.
Kelsey Plum nearly claimed a double-double with 27 points and nine assists, while Dearica Hamby had 19 points with seven rebounds and Nneka Ogwumike scored 20 points.
Erica Wheeler, who started in place of Ariel Atkins (concussion), scored 10 points with seven assists and was a plus-16 as the primary ball handler after starting the season two for 16 from the field. That freed up Plum to be in position to score, setting up a much more efficient Sparks offense.
Toronto was shorthanded in the frontcourt without starting center Temi Fagbenle (right shoulder), and the Sparks trio of bigs had a field day with 54 points in the paint.
The Sparks came out firing on Friday, opening with a 17-2 run.
The Tempo went on a 10-0 burst heading into the second quarter but the Sparks countered to maintain momentum and led 46-38 at halftime.
A Wheeler three-pointer early in the third quarter gave the Sparks a 20-point lead. The Tempo cut it to three midway through the fourth while Brittany Sykes (27 points, seven assists) sparked Toronto’s rally. The Tempo put up more shots than the Sparks, 70-58, largely because of a 10-2 offensive-rebounding gap.
Cameron Brink’s 10 points were the only ones provided by the Sparks’ bench, while the Tempo got 42 points from reserves.
Toronto was coming off its first win in franchise history on Wednesday when it defeated Seattle but struggled against a more complete offensive team in the Sparks.
In her return to Los Angeles after winning a national championship with UCLA this spring, Tempo rookie Kiki Rice netted 11 points.
Kate Martin made her Sparks debut as a developmental player with Atkins and Sania Feagin (lower left leg) unavailable and picked up one rebound in six minutes.
The Sparks will face Toronto again on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
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The WNBA season has been in session for about a week, so it is far too early to make assumptions about teams. That doesn’t mean we won’t make them; it’s just too early to really believe it. I lost my first WNBA bet this season, so I’m hoping to avenge that loss here as the Sky take on the Mercury.
The Chicago Sky are one of the most poorly run franchises in basketball. They have had some great names on their team and only one championship to show for it.
Phoenix Mercury forward DeWanna Bonner shoots over Indiana Fever guard Aerial Powers in the first half at PHX Arena. (Rick Scuteri/Imagn Images)
There really isn’t a clear indication of what is wrong with the franchise, but they’ve never been able to retain their talent. Aside from Kamilla Cardoso, I can’t name a player on this team that they’ve actually drafted. They just seem to get good players and then show them the door.
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Even though they’ve had questionable front office decisions, they seem to have put together a solid team for this season – something I didn’t expect before the season started.
They are 2-0, which is too early to really say they are a good team. I also want to reserve judgment until they face a team with a longer history than last year. The Portland Tempo played their first-ever game against the Sky, and Golden State was good last year, but still is in just their second season of existence.
The Phoenix Mercury are actually considered one of the best franchises in the league. I’m sure there are issues that people have reported, but for the most part, they have good facilities, and people want to play for their team. They made it all the way to the WNBA Finals last season before falling to the Las Vegas Aces. This year, they are looking to restart that journey and see if they can win the last game of the year.
Phoenix Mercury guard Kahleah Copper dribbles the ball in the second half at CareFirst Arena in Washington, D.C., on July 27, 2025. (Emily Faith Morgan-Imagn Images)
It will need to come with some better play than they’ve shown through three games this year. They are just 1-2 for the year with a 0-1 home record. The lone win was a blowout victory over the Aces (a clear revenge game if we’ve ever seen one). Then they lost the next two games against Golden State and Minnesota. Losing to the Lynx wouldn’t be a problem, but they didn’t have Napheesa Collier, who still has an ankle injury.
I expect the Mercury to make some adjustments for this game. They haven’t looked very crisp to begin the year, but they’ve been strong on offense, averaging 87 points per game.
The Sky are going to keep relying on their offense to do just enough and their defense to lock in. The Sky do have an edge on the interior, so they can get buckets fairly easily down low. I like the over 166.5 in this game.
Chicago Sky guard Skylar Diggins chases the ball during the fourth quarter against the Golden State Valkyries at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on May 13, 2026. (Bob Kupbens/Imagn Images)
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I also think it is worth betting on Kahleah Copper to go over her point total. Copper had two rough games before she broke out in the last game. Now she has the same sight lines and can attack the bigs from the Sky with her athleticism. Since going to Phoenix, she has scored 29, 7, 16, 25 and 28 points in five games against them.
For more sports betting information and plays, follow David on X/Twitter: @futureprez2024
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