Philadelphia soccer in the 1940s and 1950s, part 1

Earliest Memories

My earliest soccer memories were watching my father play in the late ‘30s and kicking a ball in the streets with my twin brother, Jim. I remember above all the pungent smell of liniment in the changing rooms for my father’s teams–they had no locker rooms, just places to change–and hanging around with Jim as our father prepared for a match with his German-Hungarian Club. The “Hunkies,” an outstanding amateur soccer team in late ‘30s in Philadelphia, were no different than the other ethnic clubs that dotted the Philadelphia landscape in this period. They were the immigrant Scots on the Blue Bells, the Germans with the German-Hungarians, the Irish playing with the Celtics, along with trade union-backed teams like the Bricklayers and Hosiery Local, or corporate teams such as Bethlehem Steel and Fleisher Yarn. Ethnics dominated Philadelphia soccer, although Philadelphia nurtured a sizable number of home-grown talent.

My father was a blur in his red and black jersey–running, passing. tackling, yelling-a 5’7” pesty Scottish center half moving up and down the field under the traditional 2-3-5, soccer’s mainstay system since the 1870s. And he seemed to be always full of mud.

Jim and I shared oranges with the players at halftime, sometimes kicking a ball with a sympathetic player. These early experiences created an accepting, pleasant soccer environment for us. But beyond the liniment, the ethnic clubs, and the post-game parties where someone was always good for a soda, we had the streets of Philadelphia’s Kensington area where we grew up in a working-class neighborhood of red-brick row houses on a tight little street. Helen Street was our playground, a garage door our goal. Streetlights and curbs were merely additional obstacles to be overcome. We went 1 v 1 for hours on that street, joined occasionally by cousins and neighbor kids for 2 v 1 or 3 v 2 games. Time skipped by and 25-20 was not an uncommon score.

We always kept score in ”street soccer,” building in an early and not-to-be-forgotten competitiveness. We invented ways to take each other on without instruction, now called “self-teaching” by the licensed coaches. We also fought with each other and with neighbor kids. Our father, a former amateur boxer in Scotland, had taught us to use our fists when we were five years old: “If you’re going to play this game, you have to know how to fight,” words reminiscent of an earlier era of rough-and-tumble ethnic soccer. But whatever we did with the ball on Helen Street, we learned the rudiments of soccer techniques and tactics with tough, challenging opponents, inventing moves as we needed them. We shielded, overlapped, changed pace and direction, jockeyed, executed wall passes, and nutmegged each other without ever hearing the terms.

Occasionally our father would join us, but the long hours of work during World War II took him away most of the time. He did find time to train the Blue Bells, and our joys came in getting a used ‘T-Ball,” as they were called then, a bloated leather, misshapen bladder-filled ball that rolled in curious and unpredictable directions. We could depend on a hand-me-down pair of Hotspurs or Mansfields once a season, soccer shoes with high tops, steel toes, and replaceable nail-in leather studs. Those were heavy and cumbersome. And as I reflect back, today, you can just go online and go to any of the hundreds of ecommerce websites for the best CrossFit shoes. When our father brought home a torn Blue Bell white-and-blue striped jersey, we fought over it to decide who would be “the big player” that day. This wasn’t used equipment–it was new for us and helped us to identify with the older players.

How difficult it is to explain to young players today, including my daughters who were good players, how we felt about these clunky old shoes when they thought nothing of paying out $100 or more because they liked the purple and yellow stripes on the shoes, or $60 for a slick, imitation leather ball that never loses its shape.