I'm not gonna touch on the drum you have. That's for the vintage people to handle.
If you port your head a few things change. First thing more air can move freely. If you want the drum's sound to be more to the point, then that's good. You might not want that though.
If you have an issue with your beater coming off the head, it's either your tuning or your technique. Tuning will be the tuning of your batter head. If it's too tight and not enough air moves out of the head you can have those issues.
It really comes down to what you want the drum to do. If you want that bouncy big band sound then you need to work on technique. If you want to play with the response of the head then looking into porting the drum and tuning different will address that.
I'd love to play big band again so I'll devil's advocate you to play with the tuning of the head.
Play with your instrument. Tune it low. Tune it high. Switch between ported heads and unported heads. Have some fun with it. Don't treat it like a problem. Treat it like your chance to be an awesome drummer. What's more fun? Having people on a forum tell you what to do, or you in there with your drums trying every which way? I'm not trying to disuade you from talking with us fellow drummers, cause we'll all chime in, but I'm encouraging you to just play with tunings and all that.
First thing I look at if I don't like how my foot comes off the bass drum head is the head and my pedal. Start from the source and work your way out.