How a forgotten San Francisco ballpark nearly destroyed the western half of the city

“You should name it icicle area,” one fan advised Chronicle sports activities editor Harry B. Smith.

“It was freezing chilly,” Smith wrote the following day, “nearly as dangerous as you’ll ever discover it in that neck of the woods, and it’s fairly inside cause that it interfered with the standard of the pitching.”

Ewing Area is all however forgotten in time. However the Richmond District ballpark that served as a one-year residence to
the San Francisco Seals
of the Pacific Coast League deserves to be remembered as the last word cautionary story
of
poor planning and hubris. It wasn’t simply an enormous monetary failure. By the tip, it was a Stephen King villain of a area. Seemingly sentient in its evil, it almost destroyed the western half of the town in its cinematic last act.

It began,
like many large San Francisco failures, as a declaration of victory.

The Seals had been enjoying in Recreation Park, an ageing Mission District ballfield whose operators had feuded with J. Cal Ewing, the workforce’s proprietor. Ewing responded along with his pocketbook, sinking $100,000 in a substitute area under Lone Mountain on the nook of Masonic Avenue and Anza Avenue, then thought-about a part of the Richmond District.

It was a speculative transfer. Ringed by 4 cemeteries, the world was identified extra for its useless San Franciscans than its stay ones. However streetcar service was energetic, and there have been already plans to
transfer the our bodies to Colma.

Ewing constructed with the climate in thoughts, designing the grandstands to face the solar (ought to it deign to seem),
and utilizing wooden, figuring concrete and metal had been extra prone to conduct the chilly. Opening Day was a frigid and windy foreshadowing of days to return, however The Chronicle’s protection largely projected optimism.

“Actually the opening of Ewing Area yesterday was an event that may go down in San Francisco’s baseball historical past, which dates again a half century,” baseball author Fred A. Purner wrote. “Undoubtedly such an up-to-date and delightful residence for baseball can’t assist however advance our nice and superb nationwide pastime.”

However nearly instantly, the media turned on the sector, and few within the sellout crowd returned as regulars. Inside three weeks, that crowd of 18,000 had winnowed to a hardy 200, together with the peanut distributors and cushion sellers.

“Every one in all them needs to be handed a gold medal by the administration of Ewing Area,” Purner wrote in The Chronicle after that June 6, 1914, recreation, earlier than reporting that Seals star Elmer Zacher “pulled a little bit of good-natured humor by displaying up in middle area with an upraised umbrella.”

It was an early style of the irritating Candlestick Park expertise. Maybe fueled by their discomfort, the gang appeared vulnerable to anger; alongside the advertisements on the outfield wall was a warning that followers who threw their cushions can be arrested, with $10 going to whomever turned them in.

Besides Ewing Area had a much bigger drawback than Candlestick’s wind and chilly. The fog rolled in from the west unimpeded, making the monitoring of fly balls significantly troublesome.

An oft-told Ewing Area story that ballplayer Pete Daley began a hearth within the dugout to maintain heat
has been largely debunked. However extra seemingly true is the story, reported by Chronicle columnist Will Connolly in 1938, that the Seals as soon as despatched a batboy to tell outfielder Zacher that the aspect was retired; he was misplaced within the fog and didn’t notice his personal workforce was as much as bat.

Whereas not each recreation was depressing or sparsely attended, heavy fog was a frequent impediment; the Chronicle reported a number of video games influenced by balls misplaced within the fog, and beat writers being unable to see the motion.

Ewing Area was frequented by groups from Oakland, Portland and Los Angeles, and by mid-summer it had turn into infamous outdoors the town.

“Each afternoon a fog rolls in from the Golden Gate simply concerning the starting of the second inning,” the Los Angeles Instances reported in July 1914. “The gamers turn into dim spectators via the mist and the few scattered spectators sit within the stands in a shivering distress.”

There have been monetary points past the fluctuating crowds, together with freeloaders. The Chronicle later reported that future governor Edmund “Pat” Brown, Jerry’s dad, burrowed underneath a fence on Opening Day in 1914. Followers found they might simply watch on Lone Mountain totally free; at one level Ewing threatened to boost the outfield fence to 50 toes to dam their view.

He didn’t have to. The workforce was bought on the finish of the 12 months to Henry and Clarence Berry, with Ewing Area’s inclusion as a package deal deal initially holding up the transaction. The Berrys finally shed the anchor, moved again to Recreation Area within the sunny Mission District in 1915, and stayed for a lot of the subsequent 16 years — when
Seals Stadium was constructed
at Bryant and sixteenth streets within the Mission. Ewing Area, the “up-to-date and delightful residence for baseball,” had lasted one 12 months.

Nonetheless, the Richmond area was rapidly modified for rugby, soccer and soccer, which made extra sense within the wind, chilly and fog. A transportable wood boxing ring was assembled, and at the least one championship combat was staged within the outside, with the ring saved beneath the wood grandstands.

It might finally function extra gas to the literal hearth that was Ewing Area’s last act: On June 5, 1926, a patron dropped a lit cigarette and triggered one of many greatest conflagrations in San Francisco historical past. Each firefighter and truck within the metropolis was wanted, as 100 houses burst into flames. That infamous Ewing Area wind carried among the embers a mile away.

“Not since 1906 has San Francisco been in such hazard of being worn out by hearth,” San Francisco hearth chief Thomas R. Murphy advised The Chronicle the following day.

Ewing Area would stay an eyesore for 12 extra years, utilized by Richmond District weekend golfers who would bounce the fence to observe their swings. Soccer video games continued to be performed via the Thirties with followers in bleachers, and the burned-out baseball grandstands nonetheless seen on the opposite finish of the grounds.

The stays of the sector had been demolished in 1938 and changed by the upscale Ewing Terraces within the new Anza Vista neighborhood, the place they continue to be with no memorial for the ballpark besides the identify.

The bigger houses now promote
for greater than $2.5 million, even with the fog.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s tradition critic. E mail: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub