LaForce, Tom
| Tom LaForce – (2004) |
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Tom says his competitive fires first started to burn when he played baseball in the Hot Stove League ranks for Lorain Sprague Builders, which was owned by the father of the team’s manager, Bob Sprague.
LaForce played shortstop under the tutelage of Bob for six consecutive summers in either Class F, Class E or Class D, considering Bob his first adult mentor and confidant outside of his own family. Tom’s diamond play earned him berths in league all-star games in each of those six summers.
Tom’s first school competition started as an 8th grader at Longfellow Junior High where his uncle, the late Don Fritz, was his football coach. Tom considers Lorain Sports Hall of Famer Fritz, the ex- U. of Cincinnati star, one of the best coaches he had — ever. The Longhorns won the City grid championship that year and defeated the Elyria High freshmen for good measure in the Horns’ independent season finale.
“Tommy Terrific,” who also played basketball at Longfellow, entered Lorain High as a 9th grader in September 1961 and went on to earn six varsity letters with the Steelmen — three in baseball, two in football and one in basketball.
Coached by Vic Furiga in baseball, LaForce batted .350 as a sophomore, .378 as a junior and .450 as a senior when Furiga’s club got a few bad bounces and failed to make their customary charge in the rugged big-school tourney division. The Steelers had gained the “Sweet 16” among spring tournament survivors when LaForce was a both a sophomore and junior.
To illustrate his diamond prowess, LaForce hammered a two-run homer but Lorain suffered a 3-2 loss in the Buckeye Conference championship game when he was just a sophomore. In football, LaForce started at end in 1963 and 1964, making second team All-Ohio when the co-captain caught more than 20 passes from future Lorain Hall of Famer Bill Kishman in their 7-3 senior season of ’64, the best here since 1959.
Among the other influential coaches, and men, during LaForce’s career were Ken Brooks and Harvey Herrmann. “These two gentlemen, more than any other non-family members, gave me the foundation I needed in athletics and life,” reflected LaForce. “No two people had a greater impact on my life.”
During LaForce’s senior year at Lorain, he was actively recruited by such Ohio colleges as Akron, Ashland and Baldwin-Wallace, as well as Division I mainstays Pitt and Syracuse, but he chose a congressional appointment to the history-laden U.S. Naval Academy.
At Navy, LaForce played football sparingly as sophomore; missed his junior year with a broken arm, then earned a starting berth at defensive tackle as a senior. In the 1968 Army-Navy grudge battle, LaForce intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown. For that performance, he was named United Press International’s Eastern College Player of the Week.
New Yorker Magazine cited LaForce as the smallest defensive tackle in Division One football during his senior season. Among his coaches at Navy were future NFL pro super-star Roger Staubach, colorful current ESPN sports commentator Lee Corso, as well as future NFL Atlanta draftee Leeman Bennett.
After batting .328 on the Plebe baseball team, Tom dropped baseball to concentrate on academics and football at Navy. He graduated with a BS Degree in Engineering in 1969, but Tom was asked to return to Annapolis that autumn to help coach a Navy freshman team that finished 9-0.
Following six years of active naval duty, including two years in Cleveland (which allowed him to play softball with the local PACC and Kraka Cafe teams as a commuter in the 1970s), Tom eventually settled in the Chicago area. He has been playing or managing senior baseball in a Roy Hobbs-type league since 1988.
As a senior diamond pilot, LaForce’s clubs have won three national senior crowns, the latest in 2002.
