June 27, 1922: Bill Force tosses no-hitter for Detroit Stars

When one thinks of the best pitchers in the first few seasons of the Negro National League, a few hurlers immediately come to mind: Hall of Famer Bullet Rogan of the Kansas City Monarchs; Indianapolis ABCs workhorse Jim Jeffries; Dave Brown, who led the Chicago American Giants to three straight titles (1920-1922); and Hall of Famer Andy Cooper of the Detroit Stars.

While these pitchers command most of attention of the early years of the NNL, many other effective, indeed occasionally brilliant pitchers have yet to be examined thoroughly by historians. One such moundsman is Bill “Buddie” Force, who tossed a no-hitter for the Detroit Stars in 1922, the NNL’s third season.

After attending Knoxville College, a HBCU1 in Tennessee, Force began his professional baseball career as a 24-year-old with the Knoxville Giants in 1920, the inaugural season of the Negro Southern League.2 The following season Force was signed by the NNL founder and owner of the Chicago American Giants, Rube Foster. Force was subsequently transferred to Detroit, a team Foster also co-founded and co-owned with Tenny Blount. Standing 5-feet-9 and weighing 165 pounds, Force burst on the scene in ’21, posting a 12-10 record and logging 205 innings for the fifth-place Stars (30-33).

Prognosticators predicted that the Stars’ pitching staff, led by Bill Holland, Cooper, and Force, would enable the club to compete for the 1922 NNL title. Player-manager Bruce Petway’s Stars returned to the Motor City on Sunday, June 26,3 after what the Detroit Free Press described as a “very successful road trip,” winning three of four games in Pittsburgh and five of six in Chicago against league and nonleague opponents.4 The Stars (15-12) were in fourth place, just behind the American Giants (13-10) and Monarchs (14-10) and well behind the streaking ABCs (21-5).5

Hours after an all-night bus ride back home, the Stars commenced a four-game series against the last-place St. Louis Stars (7-13). According to the Free Press, the series had been scheduled to be played in St. Louis, but Rube Foster “ordered” that the series be moved to Detroit because the St. Louis Stars’ new ballpark was still under construction.6 Located at the intersection of Compton and Market Streets, several blocks east of Handlan’s Park, where the club had occasionally played,7 the new Stars Park was scheduled to have its grand opening on July 10.8 Despite St. Louis’s record, the Free Press expected the series to be “keenly contested” because “invaders have a strong pitching staff,” including 19-year-old rookie Cool Papa Bell and Deacon Meyers.9

The Stars-Stars series was expected “draw a large crowd” at Mack Park.10 Constructed around 1912 by sports promoter John Roesnick, the ballpark was located on the southeast corner of Mack and Fairview Avenues, about four miles east of downtown Detroit in a predominantly White, working-class neighborhood. The ballpark had a capacity of about 10,000, including 6,000 in the grandstand.11 Despite the neighborhood’s perceived racial animosity, “the Stars have been packing large crowds into Mack Park all season,” reported the Free Press.12 Many Black fans traveled by streetcar several miles northwest from the densely populated Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods, where African Americans had begun to settle during the Great Migration from the South into the industrialized city.

The series commenced with a wild affair on June 25. Starter Jack Marshall, with late-game relief help from Bill Holland, staved off a St. Louis comeback for a 10-8 victory. The hero of the game was slugger Edgar Wesley, who collected four hits, including a home run, in four at-bats.13 Mack Park’s dimensions were ideally suited for Wesley, an overlooked NNL slugger, and later Turkey Stearnes, whose first eight seasons (1923-1931) in the NNL – all with the Stars – established his Hall of Fame bona fides.14 According to Kevin Johnson in Seamheads, the ballpark’s asymmetrical shape favored left-handed sluggers.15 It measured just 265 feet down the right-field foul line; 276 to straightaway right field, and 318 in right-center; it extended to 405 in center field and 442 in the center-field corner;

The second game, on Monday, June 26, featured Cool Papa Bell, who went the distance and spanked a home run, in St. Louis’s 6-5 victory in 10 innings.16 Wesley belted another round-tripper.

After 43 combined hits and 29 runs in the first two games, the third game of the series on Tuesday, June 27, featured pitching. It was another picture-perfect summer afternoon with temperatures in the low 70s in Detroit.17 Toeing the rubber for St. Louis was its staff ace, 22-year-old right-hander Deacon Meyers, en route to a 12-5 record and 154⅔ innings against NNL competition.

Skipper Petway called on Force, the Stars’ third option on what might be considered the best trio of hurlers in the NNL. Continuing the momentum of his rookie season, Force was in the midst of the best season in his career. He ultimately went 11-6, logged 176⅓ innings, and led the NNL in strikeouts (120), strikeouts per nine innings (6.1), and fewest hits per nine innings (7.7), but also hit batters (10) and gopher balls (16).

For the third game in a row, St. Louis was without its steady shortstop, 36-year-old Joe Hewitt. According to the St. Louis Argus, the city’s leading Black weekly, he was hit on the “back of the right ear in practice and cannot play.”18 Player-manager Bill Gatewood, who had played with Detroit the previous season and had tossed NNL’s first no-hitter, adjusted his lineup, moving light-hitting second baseman Eddie Holtz to shortstop and inserting rookie James White at second. Even without Bell, who had the day off, St. Louis was a dangerous club with Charlie Blackwell, coming off a fantastic campaign in 1921, batting .405, and en route to a .361 mark against NNL competition in ’22.

Play-by-play information might not exist for this game. The St. Louis Argus and the Free Press published brief, albeit generic descriptions of the game, and a box score.19 Leading Black national weeklies, such as the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier, did not report on the game. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat published a line score;20 the St. Louis Star-Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did not have any information about the game.

Force overpowered St. Louis, striking out nine batters and issuing just two walks. The only other baserunner resulted on an error by shortstop Bill Riggins. Only four balls left the infield, resulting in putouts by outfielders. Edgar Wesley recorded 11 outs at first base, of which four came on assists by Force.

Detroit’s offensive action against Meyers was confined to two innings. In the second inning, Petway’s squad erupted for five of their seven hits, leading to two runs. In the fifth, they loaded the bases and scored their third run on a hit-by-pitch. Meyers punched out two and walked one.

The offensive catalyst was 23-year-old Frank Warfield, who singled and doubled. Best remembered as the player-manager who led the Hildale club to Eastern Colored League pennants in 1924 and 1925, Warfield began his professional career as a 15-year-old in 1914. The Chicago Whip, a Black weekly, described Warfield as a “stellar second baseman …  [who] is performing wonders around the Keystone sack [and] has never hit the ball as he is sacking it now.”21 In an ultimate compliment, the paper gushed, “He compares favorably with Bingo DeMoss, the best second baseman in the business.”22 (DeMoss, according to his SABR BioProject biography, “was, by wide acclaim, one of the finest second basemen to play in the segregated era.”23)

Epilogue

After concluding the series with St. Louis, the Detroit Stars traveled to Kansas City. Starting the first game against the Monarchs, on July 1, Force had an 8-2 lead heading into the seventh. After surrendering three runs in the eighth, he was yanked with two outs in in the ninth. Reliever Bill Holland yielded a game-tying home run to Bullet Rogan, playing right field. The Monarchs won on Hurley McNeil’s triple and a Detroit error in the 10th.

In his final season with the Stars (1923), Force went 11-9, ranking third in innings pitched (195), while leading the NNL in games (37), which included 18 starts. In 1924 he jumped to the Eastern Colored League’s Baltimore Black Sox and played with them through the 1929 season. His career record was 59-50.

Acknowledgments

This biography was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Seamheads.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org for all Black baseball and Negro League Baseball statistics, and SABR.org.

https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1922/B06270DT11922.htm

Photo credit: Bill Force, Seamheads.com.

Notes

1 HBCU is an acronym for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

2 William J. Plott, “Negro Southern League Rosters,” Negro Southern League Museum Research Center, accessed October 29, 2023, http://www.negrosouthernleaguemuseumresearchcenter.org/Portals/0/Negro%20Southern%20League/Negro%20Southern%20League%20-%20Rosters.pdf.

3 “Detroit Stars Home on Sunday,” Detroit Free Press, June 21, 1922: 13.

4 “St. Louis to Play Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, June 25, 1922: 22.

5 Based on standings published by the Chicago Defender on June 24, 1922: 10; and July 1: 10.

6 “Detroit Stars Home on Sunday.”

7 “Detroit Stars Home on Sunday.”

8 “Getting the New Park Ready for Sun, July 9,” St. Louis Argus, June 30, 1922: 12.

9 “St. Louis to Play Detroit.”

10 “St. Louis to Play Detroit.”

11 Keith Johnson, “Mack Park: Friend or Foe,” Seamheads.com, November 11, 2019. https://seamheads.com/blog/2019/11/11/mack-park-friend-or-foe/; Richard Bak, “Long Gone,” Hour Detroit Magazine, March 25, 2014. https://www.hourdetroit.com/community/long-gone/

12 “Detroit Stars Home on Sunday.”

13 “St. Louis Stars Play Good Ball with Detroit,” St. Louis Argus, June 30, 1922: 12

14 Stearnes was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.

15 Johnson, “Mack Park: Friend or Foe.”

16 “Stars Lose in 10th,” Detroit Free Press, June 27, 1922: 16.

17 “The Weather,” Detroit Free Press, June 28, 1922: 3.

18 Getting the New Park Ready for Sunday, July 9,” St. Louis Argus, June 30, 1922: 10.

19 “Bill Force Hurls No-Hit Contest,” Detroit Free Press, June 28, 1922: 16.

20 “Detroit Stars’ Hurler Turns in No-Hit Game Against St. Louis,” St. Louis Globe Democrat,” June 28, 1922: 8.

21 “Sharing Honors with DeMoss,” Chicago Whip, July 8, 1922: 7.

22 “Sharing Honors with DeMoss.”

23 Bill Johnson, “Bingo DeMoss,” SABR BioProject, accessed October 29, 2023, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bingo-demoss/.