Maui No Ka Oi Magazine, 2025 Issue 3
The Little-Known Story of Paul Fagan and the 1947 San Francisco Seals
by Todd A. Vines
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.
In 1929, Fagan married Helene Irwin, the daughter of William G. Irwin, one of Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry pioneers. The Fagans established Puʻuohoku Ranch on Molokaʻi, and divided their time between San Francisco and the islands.
In 1944, Paul Fagan acquired 14,000 acres of land in Hāna. With Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry on the decline, Fagan converted cane fields into pastureland, relocated a herd of his Hereford cattle from Molokaʻi, and established Hāna Ranch. Two years later, Fagan opened the Kaʻuiki Inn, a placid, six-room retreat, and one of Hawaiʻi’s first hotels outside of Waikiki. He later added rooms and expanded the property, rebranding it the Hāna Ranch Hotel.
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.
In January 1947, Fagan told Harry Borba of the San Francisco Examiner, “I built the Hāna Ranch Hotel strictly for the Seals. It accommodates only sixty persons and will be used by tourists after training,” adding that he considered Hāna “the last real Hawaiʻian village in the islands.”
Getting to Hāna has always been an adventure for visitors, and the Seals’ trip was no exception. On the 2,440-mile direct flight from Oakland Airport to Puʻunēnē Airport (the island’s main airfield at the time), the oil line on one of the Matson DC-4’s prop engines failed, leaving the plane to limp across the Pacific on just three engines. Safely on island, the team still had to traverse the meandering, unpaved road to Hāna by bus. When they finally arrived, however, the Seals found an idyllic place to prepare for a pennant run.
The team trained daily from 9 a.m. to noon on a new diamond that Fagan had built, and the squad spent their downtime as many visitors do today; sunning, swimming, hiking and horseback riding. In the evenings, there was music, hula, and feasting on beef from Hāna Ranch.
The writers did, indeed, wax poetic about Hāna and Fagan’s resort. 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.
When spring training ended, the burly ballplayers and sun-kissed sportswriters moved on, but Fagan’s plan to garner free publicity was a success, and visitors began to visit Hāna in greater numbers. In 1951, Fagan sold the Seals and retired to Hāna. He passed away in 1960. The hotel itself has changed ownership and names through the years, evolving into the Hotel Hana Maui, Travaasa Hana and, most recently, the Hana-Maui Resort.
Though the Seals’ spring in Hāna has largely faded from memory, Paul Fagan’s publicity stunt marked a pivotal moment in the town’s transition from isolated agriculture community to beloved tourist destination.