Major League Baseball has existed in its current form since 1903.
In all that time, no Black woman has ever held a majority ownership stake in one of its franchises. While there’s really no shocker there, it doesn’t make it any less overdue. And there’s one woman up for the job and ready to change that.
Kwanza Jones.
Yes, her name deserves its own paragraph. And then some.
Last Saturday, the family of late San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler announced that it had reached an agreement to sell the franchise to an investor group led by Jones and her husband, José E. Feliciano, co-founder of the private equity firm Clearlake Capital. The reported valuation is $3.9 billion, clearing the previous MLB record of $2.4 billion, which Steve Cohen paid for the New York Mets in 2020, by a significant margin. Feliciano would also make history with the purchase, becoming the second Latino majority owner in the league and the first of Puerto Rican descent, joining Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno.
“We have worked hard for everything we have achieved, and we have built it together,” Jones and Feliciano said in a joint statement. “We see that same spirit in this team and its fans, and we know what it takes to win.”
Jones is not a newcomer to historic firsts. She won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater while she was still an undergrad at Princeton, and later earned a law degree from Cardozo School of Law and a master’s in dispute resolution from Pepperdine. She released music on her own independent label and founded a motivational media company. She and Feliciano have put over $200 million toward education and equity through their philanthropic initiative, and Jones has held board seats at the Apollo Theater, Susan G. Komen, and Bennett College, where her mother, her aunt, and other family members are alumnae. Princeton named two residence halls after the couple in 2023, which were the first to ever be named after Black and Latino donors in its nearly 280-year history.
The ownership transfer still needs to clear several steps. A formal vote among all 30 MLB clubs is expected at the league’s quarterly meeting in June, with the deal needing at least 22 votes in favor to move forward. From there it goes through a Securities and Exchange Commission review and needs sign-off from the City of San Diego, which holds a stake in Petco Park. That part of the process has not typically taken long in previous sales, putting the formal start of the Jones-Feliciano era somewhere around this summer’s All-Star break.
The Padres are the only major professional sports team in San Diego, and attendance has climbed to record levels three seasons running. The team was 19-12 when the announcement came down Saturday.
In their joint statement, Jones and Feliciano also said their goal is a World Series championship and a franchise that San Diego can feel connected to for generations. The track record speaks for itself.
