EDITOR’S NOTE — This is part one of a two part series looking at Lima’s local minor league team in the 1930s through the 1950s. Part two will appear in next Monday’s paper.
Spencerville’s Rick Wierwille keeps a box of mementoes that tethers him to the past, actually a time before his birth. That box contains a plethora of photographs and press clippings, many of which are barely appended by yellowed tape to the brittle pages of a scrapbook begun so very long ago. They are what’s left of a baseball career, in other words, what’s left of his uncle, Frank Biscan, better known as Porky back in 1939 and ’40, when he was indeed the king of the hill, or bump, in baseball parlance, for the hometown Pandas, Lima’s Class D minor league entry in the Ohio State League.
For those who know the arc of sports interest in our nation’s history, baseball in the late 1930s and 40s, along with boxing and horse racing, dominated the sports landscape. So it was with great fanfare when minor league baseball arrived in Lima in 1939 for the first time. Many might be surprised to know that professional baseball remained in Lima, except for the war years of 1942 and ’43, throughout the 40s and on through to 1951, with teams, besides the Pandas, that carried the monikers Redbirds, Reds, Terriers, Chiefs, and Phillies, first in the Ohio State League and, then, for the last four years, in the Ohio-Indiana League.
And, while the teams that followed the ’39 and ’40 Pandas were largely unspectacular, teams that were, at best, just a few games better than .500, and, at worst, moribund squads like the last-place Terriers of ’47 and ’48 and that last-place ’51 Phillies team that played at the fairgrounds and brought down the curtain on professional baseball in Lima, there wasn’t a doubt as to what Lima had with the first two Panda editions.
As for Porky Biscan, the stocky 5’11, 195-pound southpaw and native of Mount Olive, Illinois, who grew up as most boys did in the 1920s and early ‘30s captivated by Babe Ruth and all things baseball, his Lima times began when he arrived in ’39. He was just nineteen years old, one year removed from his inaugural minor league season with the distinctively nicknamed Mayfield (Kentucky) Clothiers, a Class D affiliate of the American League’s St. Louis Browns in what was known as the KITTY, the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League.
Biscan’s 3-2 record and 3.42 ERA in the KITTY made him attractive enough to be signed shortly after the 1939 season began by the Pandas’ Toledo ownership, a syndicate headed by attorney and future governor of the state of Ohio, Mike DiSalle.
The Pandas would play their home games at Halloran Park, formerly called the Murphy Street Park, before it was renamed as a nod of recognition to one of Lima’s baseball ambassadors of the 1920s, Bernie Halloran, when the park reopened after a fire destroyed the grandstands, a common catastrophe back in an era when ballparks were almost entirely wood structures.
Class D remains as it has always been, one of the first rungs on professional baseball’s ladder. The Ohio State League was comprised of six teams, which included, besides the Pandas, the Findlay Oilers, Mansfield Braves, Fostoria Redbirds, Tiffin Mud Hens and Fremont Green Sox.
Following a 130-game regular season that saw the teams play nearly every day, the top four teams faced off in a post-season playoff called The Shaughnessy, named for the man credited with inventing the minor league playoff system, Frank “Shag” Shaughnessy, the former Notre Dame football and baseball star of the early 20th century and former Major Leaguer, most famous for the man Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack once traded for a minor league player named Frank “Home Run” Baker, who would go on to lead the American League in circuit clouts four times.
Despite a horrific start that had the first collection of Lima Pandas drinking from the cup of victory just seven times over the first six weeks of the season, the boys who wore that block “L” on their uniform jerseys, with Porky pushing his way to the top of the rotation in ’39, caught fire in late June and finished a respectable 64-66, tied for fourth with Tiffin.
After beating Tiffin in a one-game playoff to earn the fourth seed in the post-season playoffs, the Pandas continued saving their baseball best for last by beating Fremont in a three-gamer and then, in a dramatic Game 7 against regular season champion Findlay, came off the deck once again. Down 4-2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth at Halloran, a Herb Woodten double to center scored the tying and winning runs to win the post-season crown in walk-off style.
Considering their 9-35 record at their lowest point in the season, it was a remarkable feat, one that prompted Bill Snypp, a Lima News sportswriter and future athletic publicity head at Ohio State, to write, “The Pandas gained nationwide attention, and Lima became known as the best Class D city in the Middle West by virtue of its spectacular finish.”
Porky was a key in the turnaround, as his left-handed slants helped him post a 12-3 record. Not only was he adept at throwing the ball on the edges of the plate with such accuracy but he was also accomplished standing beside it, as his .325 mark as a batsman would attest.
By mid-October, after the euphoria of the Pandas’ post-season achievement had somewhat dimmed, perhaps with baseball passions ablaze over what had just taken place in the home park off Murphy Street before brisk crowds, a Lima group headed by G. Dale Cremean, a Met Bank executive, and Roy Bowersock, owner of the Manhattan Cigar Store, purchased the Panda operation for $27,250, a price that included the franchise, the real estate (Halloran), the equipment, and sixteen players, a group that included player-manager Merle “Lefty” Settlemire, Porky and an all-star-in-the-making left side of the infield, comprised of third baseman Harlan Kiersey and shortstop Bucky Kozak.
The Pandas saw many neophyte ballplayers come and go as was common in Class D. In 1939, according to baseball-reference.com, 55 Pandas suited up at one time or another throughout the season for, first, manager William Ward and then Settlemire, the man who replaced him and oversaw the remarkable comeback.
There also was a certain frugality demonstrated at the Class D level, an eye to economics required by the limited funds available to the Ohio State League’s six teams. Generally, there were only three game balls available, so the benevolence of the fans was vital when it came to returning balls either fouled into the seats or hit over the fence.
Now under local ownership, the Panda organization in the early spring of 1940 prior to the season held tryouts to fill out the roster as the team went about the task of replacing players who had either ascended to pro baseball’s next rung, signed with another Class D team where playing time might be easier to find, or discarded their diamond dreams to see if the factories were hiring.
The candidates came from both Lima and surrounding communities. That group included a catcher from Coldwater, Ralph Weigel, a player who, along with Porky, would become two of the three Pandas to make it all the way to the Majors, with player-manager Lefty Settlemire already having seen the inside of Fenway Park as a member of the 1928 Boston Red Sox. Weigel would one day wear a White Sox uniform while Biscan would wear one for the St. Louis Browns.
And so, for Porky and Ralph and the rest of the Pandas and all those Halloran Park fanatics, who comprised weekday gatherings averaging between a robust 1,500 to 2,000 and often swelled on weekends to more than 3,000, it was on to the serious business of baseball in a season that would begin when the spring buds were just emerging on the trees and last through August’s dog days and on into early autumn.
For Lima’s Pandas, and especially for Porky Biscan, it would be the best year ever, a year the Pandas would find even better than the previous year’s remarkable comeback, and a year when Porky was a marvel, both on the mound and also at the plate, where he not only stroked that 108-stitch white sphere at a .300-plus clip again but also found something not often found at baseball’s fourth and final base, love.
And, I’ll tell you about all of that as well as the roads taken by Porky Bscan following his time here in Lima, as he traversed thoroughfares filled with joy, professional accomplishment, patriotism and tragedy. Such are the curveballs life often throws.
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