Larry Lucchino, who served as Padres president from 1995 to 2001 and helped get Petco Park built, died Tuesday. He was 78. Lucchino was “surrounded by family,” a statement from the Lucchinos. They went on to thank his “friends and caregivers, who, over the past few months, have surrounded him with love, laughter and happy memories.” The Padres inducted Lucchino into their Hall of Fame in 2022 alongside broadcaster Ted Leitner. The ceremony took place at Petco, which Lucchino spearheaded after helping build Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Lucchino also worked for the Boston Red Sox, serving as President and CEO from 2002 to 2015. “We knew right from the outset that this was all about a ballpark play to stabilize the team,” Lucchino told the Union-Tribune in 2022. “But I had been warned by various people in baseball, including Peter O’Malley, that I should not come west for this experience, because I could not tell from where I was, but the Padres games are just where they should be. They should be on the Dodgers’ station because it was a strong overlap between San Diego and
Los Angeles. “While there was some overlap, I think San Diego has demonstrated to the world that it is a great
baseball town.” While in San Diego, Lucchino helped build a Padres team that went to the playoffs in 1996 and 1998. Their ’98 squad is the last San Diego team to to make the World Series. The month after their final out, voters approved the building of Petco. “If not for Larry Lucchino,” former Padres owner John Moores once said, “there’d be no new ballpark.” Long before arriving in San Diego, Lucchino had a front-row seat to major sports moments. He played
basketball alongside Bill Bradley at Princeton, appearing in the 1965 Final Four. Lucchino attended law school at Yale, where he studied alongside Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others. Lucchino was then hired by Williams & Connolly firm in
Washington D.C., where his boss, Edward Bennett Williams, was part of the local NFL team’s ownership group. Williams asked Lucchino to become involved, and he eventually became the Washington team’s chief counsel. When Williams bought the Baltimore Orioles in 1979, Lucchino went with him. Both teams won championships while Lucchino was on staff. So did the Boston Red Sox, who won a curse-busting World Series title in 2004 with Lucchino in charge. “If not for Edward Bennett Williams, I wouldn’t have the life or career I’ve had,” Lucchino told the Union-Tribune’s Bryce Miller in 2022. “I owe him and his family an enormous debt of gratitude.” Moores brought Lucchino to San Diego in 1995 with hopes of eventually building a new ballpark downtown. While in Baltimore, Lucchino had overseen the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which remains one of baseball’s gems. “We wanted traditional, old-fashioned ballparks with modern amenities. If we said that one time, we said it 1,000 times,” he told Miller in 2022. “(Camden Yards and Petco) both reflect their town. We wanted that. We wanted an industrial look, a warehouse setting in Baltimore. We wanted the red brick (of Petco’s Western Metal Supply Co. building) and the outdoorsy reflection of the climate and culture in San Diego. We didn’t want to fall for the ‘mission look.’ “We wanted them to look and smell like the towns they represented, and I think we succeeded in doing that.” After leaving Boston, Lucchino became part of the ownership group that moved the Triple-A Pawtucket (Mass.) Red Sox to nearby Worcester. The club plays in Polar Park, a stadium Lucchino helped build. In December, Lucchino announced plans to sell to the team to Diamond Baseball Holdings for an undisclosed price. Despite his many successes in business and sports, Lucchino’s family said Tuesday that he was especially proud of his charitable efforts. Lucchino was a three-time
cancer survivor. A non-Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosis while he was with the Orioles led Lucchino to receive a bone marrow transplant at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He also survived prostate and kidney cancers. “Taking charge of building Baltimore’s Orioles Park at Camden Yards, San Diego’s Petco Park and Polar Park for the Worcester Red Sox, as well as his role in the Boston Red Sox’s ‘reversing the curse’ by winning the 2004 World Series, were exemplary accomplishments. Equally important to Larry was the establishment of the first-of-its-kind in professional sports ‘San Diego Padres Scholars’ college scholarship program, co-founding the Boston Red Sox Foundation and being Chairman of the Jimmy Fund, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s grassroots effort to help save lives and give hope to cancer patients everywhere,” his family said. “He brought the same passion, tenacity and proving intelligence to all his endeavors, and his achievements speak for themselves.” This story will be updated. U-T columnist Bryce Miller and former U-T sports editor Jay Posner contributed to this story.