Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [63]
Forty years had now passed since the U.S. team won a single World Cup match and American soccer fans had to be discouraged—especially sixty-three-year-old Walter Bahr.
Back in 1950, Bahr was earning $50 a week as a physical education teacher at a Philadelphia high school. He pulled down an extra $100 as a midfielder playing for the U.S. team that traveled to Brazil in June to compete in the World Cup.
Bahr and his teammates lost their opening match to Spain, then drew England, the world’s foremost soccer powerhouse. But great goaltending from goalie Frank Borghi—who made his living as an undertaker—kept the United States in contention against the Brits, a team comprised of full-time professionals. Late in the first half, Bahr laced a kick from twenty-five feet away and watched his teammate Joe Gaetjens head the ball in for the go-ahead goal. England played a relentless second half, but the United States held on to win 1-0 in what is considered one of the greatest upsets in soccer history.
“It would be like a high school team almost beating the New York Yankees,” Bahr said in 2010. “A Division III basketball team beating the Lakers.”
Despite the forty years of World Cup failure that followed the U.S. improbable triumph over England, Walter Bahr was not starved for victories. His playing career ended in 1957, and he became a coach, first for Philadelphia’s franchise in the American Soccer League, then at the collegiate level, with the Temple Owls and Penn State University Nittany Lions.
During that time, Bahr, and his wife, Davies Ann, raised three sons—daughter Davies Ann Bahr became an all-American collegiate gymnast—and taught soccer to each of them. Aside from passing, trapping, and other fundamentals, Walter Bahr instilled in his boys a simple lesson about sports competition, one learned during that June victory over England in 1950: “If the better team always won the game, they wouldn’t play it.”
Although neither would completely follow in his father’s footsteps, the two youngest boys eventually discovered the same thrill of historic victory felt by Walter Bahr in June 1950.
“[Growing up] we actually pretended we were in the World Cup,” Matt Bahr said. “Soccer gave us everything we have in football.”
Within a few years of leaving Penn State, each Bahr had earned Super Bowl rings, not a grip of the FIFA World Cup Trophy. Chris kicked two field goals and three extra points in the Oakland Raiders’ 27-10 victory over Philadelphia in Super Bowl XV. Three years later, his eight points (five PATs and a field goal) contributed to the Raiders’ 38-9 blowout of Washington in Super Bowl XVIII.
A poor 1989 campaign prompted the San Diego Chargers to release Chris. The following August, his younger brother Matt—the seven-year incumbent kicker for the Cleveland Browns—tried to find him a job kicking for the New York Giants.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” later said Giants Director of Personnel Tim Rooney. “Basically, the gist of what he said was, ‘Tim, if you’re looking for a kicker anytime this year, how about considering my brother Chris, please?’ I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t pay that much attention to him. I remember I nodded, because I didn’t want the kid to think I was being ignorant or anything. [But] I didn’t really figure we’d need another kicker this season.”
A month later, both Bahrs were unemployed until the Giants signed Matt in September 1990. And because the mid-season replacement had accounted for every point in the Giants’ NFC Championship Game victory over San Francisco—including the last-second forty-two-yarder—Bahr drew a lot of attention during the week of Super Bowl XXV.
“Because it was a game-winning field goal, both kickers were asked invariably, ‘Do you want the Super Bowl to come down to a field goal?’” Bahr recalled years later. “And my answer always was, ‘Hell No! I want to win by two touchdowns. It’s much more fun winning by a bunch, then you can enjoy the game. Things get pretty tense when it’s last second.’”
Bahr’s counterpart on Super Bowl Sunday, Scott