Donald Trump, Chairman of the … Padres?

Before his controversial run for president, before becoming a reality TV star, before he purchased the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, the real estate mogul briefly toyed with purchasing the Padres in the winter of 1986 from then-owner Joan Kroc. Trump was contacted by Padres first baseman Steve Garvey as he was entering the final years of his playing career.

“He said he was interested,” Garvey told the Los Angeles Times.

Garvey added: “He wondered if he could take the (Padres) franchise and move it back East, because he really wasn’t on the West Coast at the time. He said, ‘Gosh, if I had been out there already it would be a great complement.’ ”


A postseason hero in the Padres’ run to the 1984 World Series, Garvey flew to the East Coast to discuss Trump’s inclusion in a potential consortium to purchase the club. Trump previously bought the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League – a rival league of the NFL that lasted only three years – but opted against the Padres as his initial investment in California, Garvey told the LA Times.

“It would have been interesting,” Garvey said. “To be a Major League owner and have a presence on the West Coast would have been a great foundation for him out there.”

Kroc might not have been interested in selling to Trump, either, according to reporting in the San Diego Union in December 1986 that largely dismissed the likes of Trump and 20th Century Fox investor Marvin Davis as viable suitors:

“Word is that the baseball establishment considers them unwelcome mavericks – a bit too independent and ostentatious to play ball with the rest of the owners.”


Kroc – who inherited the Padres when husband Ray died in 1984 – ultimately sold the team to Tom Werner and 14 other Southern California-based investors for $75 million in 1990.

jeff.sanders@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutSanders