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In 2011, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement spread across America (including San Diego). Nobody would expect Santa Claus to protest anything, so I figured such a stunt would gain publicity for my Ted Williams statue campaign… and it worked! It was during the holiday season and I think every TV station in San Diego interviewed Santa. The story was off-beat and meant in good humor, but the message was the important thing. - Bill Swank, August 2018

CLAUS FOR A CAUSE: Bill Swank, a local baseball historian who doubles as Santa Claus during the holidays, took his campaign to get a statue of Ted Williams erected at downtown’s former Lane Field to the S.D. Port Commission board meeting Tuesday. Guards allowed the red-suited “Baseball Santa” to enter, but minus his candy cane-striped baseball bat and his “Occupy Lane Field” protest sign.

Swank delivered his plea Santa-style:

“T’was the night before baseball and all through the town

Not a creature was stirring when Santa took the mound.

He told the board members

I have a goal,

A statue of Ted Williams…

Or I’ll give you all coal!”

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The ghosts of San Diego baseball past weren't far away Sunday, as locals and visitors took in their first weekend look at Lane Field Park -- the place where baseball great Ted Williams first became a star and the San Diego Padres were born.

Located on 1.6 acres at the northeast corner of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway, the park commemorates the ballpark built for $25,000 by Depression-era workers for Los Angeles businessman Bill Lane, who moved his Pacific Coast League Hollywood Stars to San Diego in 1936 and renamed them the Padres.

For 22 seasons, the minor league Padres played at a bayfront park -- known for its wooden bleachers and splinters -- before moving to Mission Valley in 1958 and then going major league at Qualcomm Stadium a decade later. The site, created when the tidelands were filled west of Pacific Highway, had been used since about 1918 for tennis, baseball and then Navy recreation. It became available when Navy Field was built on the site what is today the San Diego Convention Center.

The new $5 million Lane Field Park, designed by Denver-based Civitas, was donated by LFN Developers, who are building a 400-room dual-branded Marriott hotel scheduled to open next year to the east. A public outreach meeting is set at 6 p.m. April 1 at the port's headquarters on Pacific Highway to discuss a second 400-room hotel for the south side of the Lane Field property.

Bill Swank, author of two books on San Diego baseball history, attended the dedication last week and returned Sunday to see if the designers spaced out the commemorative baselines to the original 87-foot length that fell, unwittingly, 3 feet short of the regulation distance. He unspooled a yellow line of string from homeplate to first base and pronounced the measurement perfect.

"For 18 years I thought I was talking in a vacuum," Swank said, recalling his many appearances before the San Diego Unified Port District board to lobby for a baseball-themed park. "I am very pleased. They did a beautiful job in putting the ballpark (replica) here."

The park consists of illuminated markers where the bases, baselines and pitcher's mound stood from 1936 to 1958. There's a monument with a quote from Williams, the outline of the batter's boxes and a historic plaque placed elsewhere at the site in 2003.

Kensington residents Paul Jamason, 43, and Jay Gonzales, 50, tagged along as Swank completed his measurements.

"It's a great improvement over a parking lot," Jamason said of the asphalt expanse that lasted for nearly 57 years.

Three recently arrived visitors to San Diego from Germany relax on one of the comfortable lounges at new Lane Field Park in downtown San Diego. Left to right, there are Natalie Droste, Lisa Berns, and Nadine Schiller. — Charlie Neuman

Across the lawn lying on chaise lounges in the warm spring afternoon were three German au pairs, who were completing a tour of West Coast cities.

"We just happened to come by," said Lisa Berns, 21.

Only the first phase of the park has been completed. Another section to the north is planned if the port can relocate parking spaces used by the Navy Facilities Engineering Command at 1220 Pacific Highway.

And Bob Nelson, a port commissioner representing San Diego, said he hopes a statue of Williams will be added, perhaps in the left field where he played or in the batter's box, where as a Hoover High School student on summer break he first won the attention of the baseball world. He went on to lasting fame on the Boston Red Sox and toted up a lifetime batting average of .344. He died in 2002 and is also commemorated by Ted Williams Parkway, state Route 56.

Former port commissioner Steve Cushman, who served with Mayor Kevin Faulconer on a joint-powers authority formed to carry out the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan to beautify the waterfront, said Lane Field Park is an improvement on other port green spaces because it offers more than just grass and landscaping.

"I'm delighted people were using it," he said. "All this stuff isn't worth it if people aren't enjoying it."

He planned to return last night with his wife to see how the pitcher's mound, bases and line markers glow after dark.

For more information:

See The Story of Baseball Santa

See, also, Bill Swank's two books, published by Arcadia, "Baseball in San Diego: From the plaza to the Padres" (2005) and "Baseball in San Diego: From the Padres to Petco Park" 2004.