CHESTER, Pa. — Walter Bahr, who died Monday at the age of 91, was a U.S. Soccer legend who played a pivotal role in one of the greatest upsets in American sports history.
But for all the people who remember him as a hero of the 1950 World Cup team and its historic upset over England, many more recall him as something different, maybe something more — someone from Kensington who ended up shaping the lives of generations of other gritty kids from blue-collar neighborhoods around his native city.
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“It’s nice how Philadelphia,” Union technical director Chris Albright says, “is the real centerpiece of his story.”
Albright only met Bahr a few times but he knows he wouldn’t be where he is today without him. In fact, he might not have even been born.
In the early 1970s, Bahr recruited Albright’s dad John to play soccer at Temple. One of his teammates there was Larry Sullivan, whose sister John ended up marrying. By the end of that decade, Chris had arrived in the world, and from an early age he often heard about how much Bahr — “Mr. Bahr” as he always calls him — meant to their family.
“I just always knew him as the biggest influence in my dad’s soccer life,” Albright says. “My dad and two other guys were set to go see him in the hospital this week.”
Bahr passed away before they got that chance, but the memories will live on. Albright has heard all the stories from his father and his uncle, Larry Sullivan, who coached Union manager Jim Curtin at Villanova. Like the Frankford High team that Bahr coached and John Albright played for that beat Larry’s North Catholic squad in the city championship. And the time Bahr got John a full scholarship to Penn State with one phone call, which Chris says his dad promptly “partied his way out of.” And how, after John was deployed overseas in the Army for a few years, Bahr again got him a scholarship, this time to Hartwick College under head coach Al Miller — who, like Bahr, would go on to be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
“But the night before he was going to leave for Hartwick, Mr. Bahr called him and said, ‘Hey Johnny, Sorry but you can’t go to Hartwick,’” Chris Albright recalls. “My dad said, ‘What do you mean?’ [Bahr] said, ‘Well I just got the job at Temple, so I want you to come play for me.’”
For any kid from Philly, that was an offer you simply couldn’t refuse.
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“I knew Walter Bahr’s name before I knew Babe Ruth’s name,” says Sullivan, who grew up in the same Kensington neighborhood as Bahr, about 20 years after him. “He was a legend. He was one of our sports leaders.”
Bahr’s legendary status in Philadelphia wasn’t just because he set up the U.S.’s only goal in that monumental 1-0 upset of England at the 1950 World Cup — a game that was immortalized on film and grew in stature in subsequent decades as soccer became bigger in America. For Sullivan and other kids who grew up in Kensington in the 50s and 60s, it was just as much because of Bahr’s exciting playing career at, among other stops, the Philadelphia Nationals and Uhrik Truckers as well as his coaching tenure for the Philadelphia Ukrainians and Frankford High in the hardscrabble Philadelphia Public League.
“For the Public League kids, he was a god,” Sullivan says. “For Catholic League kids, he was the enemy.”
Bahr won four titles in the old American Soccer League in the early 50s and was remarkably the runner-up for the league MVP award six consecutive years, an unprecedented level of sustained dominance. His coaching legacy is evident foremost in his sons — Casey, Chris and Matt. Casey (1972) and Chris (1976) represented the U.S. in the Olympics, as their father did. All three excelled in pro soccer in the U.S. in the 70s, and Chris and Matt went on to careers as NFL placekickers, winning two Super Bowl titles each.
Sullivan, who played pro soccer with Bahr’s sons after serving in Vietnam, admitted he bumped heads a bit with the elder Bahr during his college days. But that was mainly because they were both hard-edged and serious. And Bahr usually won out in the end, in part because even in his forties, he could still do things with the ball that no one on the team could even imagine.
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“My dad said Mr. Bahr would play with them and make them all look silly,” Albright says. “He was still at that level.”
Bahr enjoyed seeing his players go after it, particularly the Army veterans. The former Temple coach used to do a drill where he’d throw a ball between John and Larry, with the speedier Albright always getting to the ball first. Then, he’d do it a second time and Larry would just clean John out, which the younger Albright says, “Mr. Bahr would get a kick out of.”
One time, at halftime of a game vs. American University, Sullivan stood up to his coach and said, respectfully, that Temple’s center forward was killing the team’s spirit by not playing hard enough and going for any balls.
“Well, who should I put up there?” Bahr asked him sharply.
“Coach, I really don’t care who you put up there,” Sullivan recalls telling him. “We’ve got three or four guys who will go for the ball.”
Bahr replied, “Well, why don’t you go up there, Big Head?”
Sullivan, a fullback, agreed and scored two goals and added an assist to lead Temple to a 3-1 win. He never played in the attack again.
“He didn’t want guys out there doing a dance,” Sullivan says. “He didn’t want dancers. He wanted guys who were gonna pull the wagon. He appreciated guys who worked hard.
“He wouldn’t hurt you but he’d kick you in the ass, you know? He was a Kensington guy. He was a gentleman and a nice guy, but when the whistle blew, he was all business.”
Many years later, after Bahr parlayed his success at Temple into a stint as Penn State’s head coach from 1974 to 1988, Sullivan’s Villanova teams would scrimmage Penn State, where Bahr remained in his retirement. And Bahr would always come out to watch, praising Sullivan for Villanova’s style, even if the Wildcats didn’t always have the best players.
“I’d say, ‘They play like they’re from Kensington, Mr. Bahr,’” says Sullivan, who coached ’Nova from 1991 to 2007. “And he laughed and said, ‘Yes, they do.’”
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Over the past few years, Sullivan tried to visit Central Pennsylvania to see Bahr once or twice a year. Chris Albright saw him less than that but enjoyed the few occasions he got to meet him, with Bahr still recognizing him as “Johnny’s kid,” even after Albright’s playing career in MLS and with the U.S. national team.
Of course, Albright knew none of that would be possible if not for the path Bahr blazed.
“He was a kid from Kensington that did big things on the world stage and went on to give back to the game,” Albright says. “And I think we’re all thankful for that.”
“You can talk about my generation maybe being the forefathers of MLS,” he adds. “[The players on the 1950 team] were the forefathers, really, of the game in the U.S. That’s way more important.”
To pay tribute to Bahr, who was honored before the inaugural Union home game in 2010, the Philly players will wear black “W.B.” armbands for Saturday’s game vs. Vancouver.
For Curtin, who never got to meet him but heard countless stories and was always within one or two degrees of separation from Bahr in his soccer upbringing, it’s a small token of appreciation for a man who, despite being best known for his ties to the U.S. national team and Penn State, was always a Philly guy through and through.
“I have friends and people who coached me growing up all through this Philadelphia area … and when they talked about Mr. Bahr, they talked about a guy who had class, had a passion for the game, taught the game the right way,” Curtin says. “Very few people have that skill to touch that many people and touch that many lives.
“When nobody has a bad thing to say about you, it usually means you’ve had a good run. I think he falls into that category.”
Top photo: Walter Bahr, standing next to Vice President Joe Biden, acknowledges the crowd before the Union’s first home game in 2010 at Lincoln Financial Field. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Union)
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