Life
Bill Swank was born in Chicago on June 17, 1940, to parents William George Swank and Estelle Jensen Swank. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from San Diego State College in 1962. He was a Supervising Probation Officer for the County of San Diego from 1963–1994. He has three children and two grandsons. He currently lives in San Diego, California, with his wife Jeri Lynne (Bessie) Swank, whom he married in 1986.
Swank has campaigned since 1988 to get San Diego's first major league baseball player and early home run king Gavy Cravath elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame. His scale model of Lane Field (built in 1997) is on permanent display at the San Diego Hall of Champions. Following the release of his award-winning book, Echoes from Lane Field (1999), Swank has extensively explored the history of baseball in San Diego and helped honor many local players including Pete Coscarart, Johnny Ritchey, Floyd Robinson, Manuel 'Nay' Hernandez and Ted Williams.
Swank has been Santa Claus for Christmas on the Prado in Balboa Park, San Diego, since 2002. He also volunteers as Santa for several other charitable organizations in San Diego. As "Baseball Santa," he played second base for the House of David from 2003 through 2008. In 2009, Baseball Santa began giving baseball equipment to Little Leagues in Mexico.
Works
The Lane Field Padres, 1936-1946 and 1947-1957, (two volumes)
Published by the San Diego Padres and San Diego Baseball Historical Society, 1997; co-author Ray Brandes
Echoes from Lane Field
Turner Publishing Company, 1999. Winner, San Diego Press Club and San Diego Book Awards, 1999
Gold Leather Helmets, Black Hightop Shoes
Big League Press, 2003. Co-Author Bill Rice.
An Athletic History of Mission Bay High School During the 1950s. From a review by Don King, Historian of the San Diego Hall of Champions: "Bill Swank is San Diego's eminent baseball historian, but he's a couple tacos short of a combination plate. Mission Bay is a powerhouse today, but that wasn't the case when the school opened fifty years ago…and then it got worse. Why would somebody write about this? With painstaking research and a sense of humor, Swank and Bill Rice have created a time capsule of the 1950s. How did they ever find so much information about women's athletics from that era? You don't have to be a Buc to enjoy this book."
Baseball in San Diego (two books)
Baseball in San Diego; From the Padres to Petco, Arcadia Publishing, 2004 Baseball in San Diego; From the Plaza to the Padres, Arcadia Publishing, 2005
Bob Chandler's Tales from the San Diego Padres
Sports Publishing, 2006. Co-author Bob Chandler
The Life of Dion Rich: Live Like a Millionaire With No Money Down
Silver Threads, 2011. Co-author Charlie Jones.
Christmas in San Diego
Arcadia Publishing, 2015.
The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team based in San Diego. The Padres compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West Division. The Padres were founded in 1969 as one of four expansion teams to the league.
Anthony Keith Gwynn Sr., nicknamed "Mr. Padre", was an American professional baseball right fielder, who played 20 seasons (1982–2001) in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres. The left-handed hitting Gwynn won eight batting titles in his career, tied for the most in National League (NL) history. He is one of the best and most consistent hitters in baseball history. Gwynn had a .338 career batting average, never hitting below .309 in any full season. He was a 15-time All-Star, recognized for his skills both on offense and defense with seven Silver Slugger Awards and five Gold Glove Awards. Gwynn was the rare player in his era that stayed with a single team his entire career, and he played in the only two World Series appearances in San Diego's franchise history. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007, his first year of eligibility.
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Lane Field was a baseball stadium located in San Diego, California. The ballpark was home to the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League from 1936 through 1957.
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James Madison High School is a public high school in San Diego, California. It is part of the San Diego Unified School District. Madison's 50-acre (200,000 m2) campus opened in 1962. Serving almost 1,100 students in grades 9–12, it is located in the Clairemont Mesa East neighborhood, north of Balboa Ave, south of Clairemont Mesa Blvd, and west of Interstate 805.
The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team in Major League Baseball (MLB) based in San Diego, California. The club was founded in 1969 as part of the league's expansion. The team's hall of fame, created in 1999 to honor the club's 30th anniversary, recognizes players, coaches, and executives who have made key contributions to the franchise. Voting is conducted by a 35-member committee. Candidates typically must wait at least two years after retiring to be eligible for induction, though Tony Gwynn was selected during his final season in 2001 before the last game of the year. He was also the Hall of Fame's first ever unanimous selection. There are 19 members in the team's Hall of Fame, the most recent inductees being John Moores and Jake Peavy in 2023. The inductees are featured in an exhibit at the team's home stadium, Petco Park.
The 1959 San Diego F3H crash was the crash of a United States Navy McDonnell F3H-2N Demon in San Diego, California, on 4 December 1959. The pilot, Ensign Albert Joseph Hickman from VF-121, chose not to eject from the stricken aircraft, piloting it away from populated areas of Clairemont, including an elementary school, saving "as many as 700 people" on the ground, according to one estimate. The aircraft crashed into a canyon, with the pilot being the sole fatality. Hickman has been memorialized in the naming of an elementary school and a sports complex in San Diego. Several decades later, a similar crash occurred in University City, a neighborhood north of Clairemont.
Keegan Field is an amateur sports field located in Yuma, Arizona, United States. The 4‐acre athletic facility contains a softball field with lights for night games and is part of the larger 32-acre Kennedy Park Athletic Complex. It was named in honor of Frances Keegan, a local supporter of amateur athletics.
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