Before there were tourists in Hāna, there were Seals.
In 1947, Hāna played host to spring training for the San Francisco Seals, a minor-league baseball team from the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. While professional clubs have held preseason practice in warm-weather cities across Florida and Arizona since the late 1800s, few fans associate baseball of any season with the quiet town of Hāna. It’s a little-known chapter in both baseball lore and the story of Maui.
The affair was conceived by Paul Fagan, a California entrepreneur and the majority stakeholder in the Seals organization, but Fagan’s own business interests went far beyond baseball.
Eager to attract visitors to Hāna (and his newly updated resort), Fagan announced that he would bring his Seals in for spring training. His plan was to fly in a slew of prominent sportswriters to chronicle the camp, confident they would gush about the setting and Fagan’s hotel.
The writers did, indeed, wax poetic. Harry Borba, who covered the Seals for the San Francisco Examiner, wrote “The place beggars description. The Seals should pay for the privilege of training in such indescribably beautiful surroundings.”
Even the near drowning of San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Bucky Walter didn’t dissuade the scribes from singing the praises of “heavenly Hāna,” circulating a nickname that lives on today.
Read my full story "The Spring that Baseball Came to Hāna: The Little-Known Story of Paul Fagan and the 1947 San Francisco Seals" in the current issue of Maui No Ka ‘Oi Magazine.
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