Once upon a time minor league baseball players had colorful nicknames like Walt "No Neck" Williams and "Rocket" Rod Gaspar.

They got married on the mound between games of doubleheaders (sometimes having pitched the first one). And, going for the big payday, they tried to hit home runs through the Columbia Inn puka atop the right field fence at old Honolulu Stadium to win $1,000.

The passing Sunday of 77-year-old baseball writer Ferd Borsch, who lived and chronicled the Hawaii Islanders for the better part of his 40 years with The Honolulu Advertiser, affords us an opportunity to recall a long-gone era all but consigned to aging memories and table-top books.

A time when the red Islander caps were omnipresent around town and people referred to the old Honolulu Stadium as the "Termite Palace" saying it with a certain reverence.

Borsch, having covered all 2,013 home games, was the prime storyteller and one of the last links to the Pacific Coast League franchise, that, with its 27-year stay, was the only professional team to take hold here.

The Islanders were a constantly changing collection of hopeful up-and-coming young players, over-the-hill veterans on the way down and guys just trying to hang on before a 9-to-5 job intruded. Which is to say that win or lose — and some years they could do plenty of either — they were usually an interesting lot.

When The Advertiser offered Borsch the job covering the just-arrived Islanders in 1961, he said it took him, "all of 10 seconds to take it before they had a chance to change their mind."

Borsch, who had covered the Portland Beavers, knew what a lot of writers have come to understand and that is, with the possible exception of boxing, minor league baseball is where the compelling stories are. For that was where you found the most colorful characters. People like crowd favorite Carlos Bernier and Hollywood-bound Bo Belinsky. Hard-boiled manager Rocky Bridges. Even owner Nick Morgan Jr., who was not below charging an umpire if he thought a blown call had cost the Islanders a game.

Of course Borsch was one of the characters, too. With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a piledriving two-finger typewriter style and an epithet for any pitcher who walked too many batters on deadline, Borsch was a Damon Runyan-esque figure if not someone snatched out of "The Front Page."

Borsch was sometimes asked why, since he loved baseball so much, didn't he pursue a job that would allow him to cover a major league team?

Because, he would say, the majors weren't as much fun. They didn't have nearly as many characters. And, where else but in Hawai'i, could a sports writer receive the honor of having one of the weekly specials at Masu's Massive Plate Lunches named after him?

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.