FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Matt Sieger

This coffee table book by Dennis Evanosky and Eric J. Kos is a treasury of beautiful old photographs and compelling history of 58 ballparks that are no longer standing.

Dennis Evanosky and Eric J. Kos put together a marvelous coffee table book called “Lost Ballparks,” with stunning photographs of 58 ballparks that are no longer standing.

The stories recounted here are from their book:

Ewing Field, San Francisco, demolished 1938

Off of Masonic Street in San Francisco between Turk and Anza streets is a small street called Ewing Terrace, which swings off Masonic to form a neat circle. This circular terrace stands where baseball fans gathered in 1914 to cheer for the San Francisco Seals in Ewing Field, abandoned by the Seals after one season.

From 1907 to 1930, with the exception of that one season, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) played their home games at Recreation Park. James Calvin “Cal” Ewing had become a major owner of the team and listened to the fans’ objections to the short fences and overcrowded bleachers at Recreation Park. So Ewing invested $100,000 in a new ballpark to open in 1914.

But Ewing sold his interest in the team before the season began to the Berry brothers, who questioned the wisdom of playing at Ewing Field because of the weather. It turned out they were right, as San Francisco’s fog frequently settled over the field at game time. The wind could be treacherous as well. Not only that, but fans could watch the game for free by climbing up to the top of nearby Lone Mountain.

Ewing Field went on to host local amateur games, a circus, an opera and other events. But in 1926 the supposedly fireproof stadium caught fire. It sat vacant until 1938 when a local construction company purchased the land and demolished the ballpark later that year.

Oaks Park, Emeryville, flattened 1957

No relation to the modern-day Oakland Athletics, the Oaks of the PCL broke ground on a new ballpark in Emeryville in 1913. It was located near the intersection of Park and San Pablo avenues and could accommodate 10,000 fans.

The Oaks won the pennant in 1927 and won two more, in 1948 under legendary coach Casey Stengel and in 1950, when Billy Martin played 29 games with the Oaks after the Yankees sent him down to the AAA club.

Crowds were falling off in the deteriorating park in the 1950s and in 1955 they moved to Vancouver, Canada and became the Vancouver Mounties. Today they are the Albuquerque Isotopes of the PCL.

Oaks Park was demolished in 1957. In 2000, animation studio Pixar built its campus on the location of the park. It is now a parking lot for the filmmaker.

Seals Stadium, San Francisco, demolished 1959

Home to the San Francisco Seals, the stadium opened on April 7, 1931. It held 16,000 fans.

In 1948, the Seals set a season record for attendance for a minor league team that stood for 40 years with 670,000 fans. That success inspired struggling big league East Coast teams to move west. In 1953 the Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee. The Philadelphia Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics two years later. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958, and the New York Giants moved to San Francisco that same year.

Ironically, the rivalry between the West Coast Giants and Dodgers overshadowed the rivalry between the Seals and the Oakland Oaks. The Giants opened the 1958 season at Seals Stadium and the Seals departed for Phoenix that same year.

The Giants played two seasons at the stadium before moving to Candlestick Park in 1960. Seals Stadium was demolished in November 1959. The site is now the Potrero Center shopping mall. A plaque on the sidewalk at 16th and Bryant streets commemorates this lost ballpark.

Candlestick Park, San Francisco, erased 2015

Although the Giants played two seasons in Seals Stadium, it was never intended to be their permanent home field. Part of the deal with the Giants moving west from New York was that the city would build the team a new stadium.

The city bought 65 acres at Candlestick Point and settled on the name Candlestick Park on March 3, 1959, after a name-the-park contest.

Architect John Bolles designed the park like a horseshoe, open in the outfield, which turned the stadium into a virtual wind tunnel. The place was so cold and windy that some fans returned their season tickets for refunds.

Candlestick was the first modern baseball stadium built entirely of reinforced concrete, which served it well on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck during Game 3 of the “Bay Bridge” World Series.

The outfield area was fully enclosed when the 49ers moved from Kezar Stadium to Candlestick Park in 1971. But the enclosure did not tame the wind, as it still swirled around the stadium’s interior.

The Giants played their last game at Candlestick on September 30, 1999, before moving to AT&T Park (now Oracle Park). The 49ers played at Candlestick until December 23, 2013. With no more tenants, the stadium would face the wrecking ball, but not before Paul McCartney played a concert there on August 14, 2014, some 48 years after he had sung at Candlestick as a member of the Beatles.

Let's toss in one more vanished baseball field for good measure -- the stadium in New York City where the Giants played before moving to San Francisco:

Polo Grounds, New York, razed 1964

The New York Giants originally played in a polo grounds and the name of their adopted ballpark stuck. They moved into a second version of the park in 1889 and a third in 1891, situated below Coogan’s Bluff in Harlem. This site served as the team’s home until 1957.

When the stadium was full, those fans without tickets gathered atop Coogan’s Bluff to watch the game for free. It was at the Polo Grounds that Harry M. Stevens single-handedly revolutionized ballpark concessions by popularizing scorecards and inventing the hot dog.

The third Polo Grounds, made entirely of wood, burned to the ground on April 14, 1911. Construction began immediately on a new, ornate one with a horseshoe-shaped, steel and concrete grandstand and 34,000 seats. The Polo Grounds had the deepest center field in baseball, but the right-field foul pole was just 257 feet from home plate.

From 1913 through 1922 the Giants shared the Polo Ground with the Yankees. Babe Ruth slugged .796 from 1920 to 1922.

In 1956, with Giants’ attendance figures suffering badly, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley talked Giants owner Horace Stoneham into moving to San Francisco. The New York Mets, an expansion team intended to replace the Giants and Dodgers, played (badly) in the Polo Grounds under manager Casey Stengel in 1962 and 1963. The stadium fell to the wrecking ball in 1964. An enormous housing project now sits below Coogan’s Bluff where the ballpark once stood.

Matt Sieger, now retired, is a former sports reporter and columnist for The Vacaville Reporter, where a version of this article first appeared. He is the author of The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978.