Remembering Terry O’Malley Seidler

The Seidler and O’Malley families mourn the passing of matriarch Terry O’Malley Seidler at age 92. The daughter of Kay and Walter O’Malley, she was born May 16, 1933, in New York, NY and passed away on December 18, 2025, in Pasadena, CA.

“Terry led her life with dignity, faith, warmth and love,” said her brother, Peter O’Malley. “She never had an unkind word to say about anyone. Besides being the leader of her extraordinary family, Terry was universally respected and admired by many friends. She was a great student, elected college class president and a talented athlete. Terry co-owned the Los Angeles Dodgers and served as Corporate Secretary with the Dodger Board of Directors.”

Her father, Walter, was the visionary National Baseball Hall of Fame owner/executive of the Dodgers from 1944-1979. As a youngster, Terry attended Dodger games at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn with her two grandfathers, Edwin J. O’Malley, former New York City Commissioner of Public Markets and Peter B. Hanson, Judge in Brooklyn Domestic Relations Court. A lifelong love of baseball began.

Because of her father’s involvement with the Dodgers, she literally grew up around the Major League game and became friends with many of its foremost personalities, including Vin Scully, the greatest baseball broadcaster. The Dodger lineup included stars like Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Pete Reiser, Jim Gilliam, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Carl Erskine and Don Newcombe.

Terry recalled the first time she attended a game was at age eight with her dad. His New York City law office did work for the Brooklyn Trust Company, which was a trustee of 50 percent of the Dodgers’ stock. “My earliest recollection goes back to 1941 when Brooklyn first played the Yankees in the World Series. Pop thought I was too young to make my debut at the ball park. But you should have seen his face when he came home! That was the afternoon when (Dodger catcher) Mickey Owen dropped the third strike (in the ninth inning which led to the Yankees coming back to win Game 4, 7-4, and then the World Series in five games).”  

In August 1947, she skippered the Seaford Skiff sailboat named “Dodger” to win first prize in seamanship in a race sponsored by the Narrasketuck Yacht Club, Amityville, NY for junior members under 18 years old. The following September, she and her brother Peter won the season’s award for the mid-week sailing series of the Narrasketuck Yacht Club. In 1950, she topped the Seaford Skiff racers to earn the Great South Bay Yacht Racing Association’s Ketcham Trophy.  

She attended Froebel Academy (elementary school, Brooklyn) and graduated from St. Francis Xavier Academy (high school) in Brooklyn, where she captained the basketball team. Terry excelled next at the College of New Rochelle, NY, where she was freshman class president, captain of basketball and softball teams and a member of the student council. A speech-English major, Terry served as social chair and board member of the Athletic Association, was a member of Props and Paints and an associate in Sodality.

Harold C. Burr featured Terry and her time at College of New Rochelle in his Brooklyn Daily Eagle column, December 4, 1954, writing, “She played first base and pitched on the softball nine. ‘I hit a home run – once,’ she said… ‘It broke a window in the infirmary. I wanted to pay for it out of spending money but the nuns at the school wouldn’t let me.’”

Terry continued by relating her college experience after the 1951 Dodgers lost the third and final playoff game to the New York Giants when Bobby Thomson hit his infamous “Shot Heard ’Round the World” home run to win the National League Pennant. “The worst time those girls gave me was when I got back to New Rochelle after the third Brooklyn playoff game in 1951 with the Giants. We lost that one, too. They knew I was coming so they baked a cake. Across the top was that odious legend, ‘Wait Till Next Year,’ and my room was draped in black crepe. But I could take it, and we had a party.” 

She spoke of true loyalty of fans. “I do think women make the best fans. They are more loyal than men when things get breaking badly. They always are behind the team, win, lose or draw. I’m a fan myself.” 

In July-August, 1954, when Walter O’Malley established a Dodgertown Camp for Boys in Vero Beach, Florida, he asked Terry to work as executive secretary. She worked in that job for three summers. In 1958, when the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles, Terry worked as a personal secretary to her father.

While the Dodgers struggled in their first season in Los Angeles, as destiny would have it, Terry met her future husband, Roland Seidler, Jr. at the May 4, 1958, Dodgers-Philadelphia game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of “St. Therese Parish Day.” The couple married on October 4 of that year at St. Therese Church in Alhambra, CA and celebrated 47 years together, until Rollie passed June 8, 2006.

When Terry’s father privately financed and built Dodger Stadium, regarded as the finest ballpark of the modern era, it was with great pride that she watched her mother, Kay, throw the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day, April 10, 1962. On the 50th Anniversary of that opening, on April 10, 2012, Terry was selected by the Dodgers to throw the ceremonial first pitch, accompanied to the mound by her brother, Peter. The enthusiastic sellout crowd cheered as she threw a strike to her catcher, Tommy Lasorda, the Hall of Fame Dodger Manager.

Beginning in 1978, Terry served as a director on the Los Angeles Dodgers Board of Directors. She was named Secretary, Dodger Board of Directors in 1981 and continued in that role through 1998. When her mother and father passed away in 1979, she and Peter shared ownership of the Dodgers.

Under the O’Malley family leadership, the Dodgers won six World Championships, including in 1981 and 1988. In 1997, the Dodgers were the only sports franchise selected by Fortune magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America,” the third time they had received that prestigious recognition. In 1982, the Dodgers established a then major league home attendance record of 3,608,881 fans through the turnstiles. It was an honor for the Dodger organization to host Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass at Dodger Stadium on September 16, 1987, before 63,000, the largest crowd in stadium history.

Terry and Rollie have 10 children: sons John, Peter, Michael, Robert, Tom and Matt and daughters Carol, Mary Kay, Annie and Jeannie, plus 32 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. Terry’s son Peter, controlling owner of the San Diego Padres, predeceased Terry on November 14, 2023.

As a lifelong sports fan, Terry acted as Manager for some of her children’s Pasadena American Little League teams, coached her kids on the finer points of shooting hoops, and held neighborhood tennis tournaments in her family’s backyard. Terry was the number one cheerleader at hundreds of her children’s and grandchildren’s sporting events, often hustling home after games to create a “well done” or “chin up, keep working hard” poster for her athlete’s front door, always emphasizing the importance of effort and good sportsmanship. Happy to share her knowledge and passion for baseball, Terry also enjoyed teaching her children and grandchildren to keep score. For many decades, Terry bled Dodger blue and then Padres brown and gold, but consistent with her mantra on life’s priorities (“faith, family, friends”), family was more important than baseball.

The O’Malley family baseball legacy started by Terry’s father, Walter, continued through Terry and her brother, Peter, and later into the third generation of O’Malley descendants’ baseball leadership spanning 80+ years. The goal of putting a winning team on the field year after year also includes “a full-time commitment to the fans, employees, and everybody,” remarked Peter O’, who added, “Fans are the smartest consumers you have, and you have to be absolutely honest with them.”  Terry’s father Walter and brother Peter strived for a winning baseball team, a family-friendly atmosphere at the ballpark, and a positive impact in the community. Terry appreciated these goals and enjoyed watching her sons commit to the same objectives.

The family’s recent chapters in professional baseball included 25 years in minor league baseball, with Terry attending dozens of games from Florida to Great Falls, MT to Visalia, CA in support of her son, Tom, who led the family’s stewardship of various minor league teams. Terry frequented Visalia Rawhide games with her children and grandchildren, keeping score and often commenting on the fun atmosphere at the ballpark. 

In 2012, when Terry’s son Peter led the effort to purchase the San Diego Padres, Terry became both an owner and avid fan, shedding her Dodger Blue and fully embracing the Padres. Terry frequently attended Padres games in person, watching all the others on TV, typically wearing a Padres jersey or hat and cheering “GOOOOOOOOOO Padres!”

Though the team colors Terry wore changed over time, she was proud of her sons continuing the family baseball legacy started by her father Walter and maintained with her brother Peter. As impactful leaders in the community, all three generations made significant investments outside the ballpark – whether supporting local youth baseball and softball, helping to grow the game of baseball internationally, or immersing themselves wholeheartedly and enthusiastically in the local community to help address problems of homelessness and poverty. 

Terry served on many community boards and was active in numerous Catholic and educational organizations. She was a long-time religious education teacher for Sts. Felicitas and Perpetua Catholic Church, and she used her time to serve those less fortunate. Among other charities, Terry supported St. Therese Catholic Church, the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the Catholic Education Foundation, Jackie Robinson Foundation, National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Mayo Clinic.

Somehow, given her thoughtfulness, boundless energy and enthusiasm, Terry always found time to encourage and lend a helping hand with a smile on her face.