|
 Walter
Bahr is one of those guys who is good at every sport he tries -
whether it be soccer, football, basketball, racquetball, or golf, Walter
knows how to put up a good fight.
However, it’s been soccer that has brought him the most professional
acclaim and the most enjoyable personal memories to boot. Still living in
Pennsylvania today, Walter Bahr signed up as an amateur with the
Philadelphia Nationals when he was only 15 years old. He helped
the Nationals to win four American Soccer League titles and was
a member of nearly all of the All-Star teams of his era. He also
had 19 caps for the U.S. National Team, (which back then played
much less frequently than today with all of the friendlies,
qualifiers, and regional tournaments on the present schedule).
Walter took the time to talk with U.S. Soccer Players about his
perspective on the game of soccer and the players dominating the
game today, and talked about some of his best memories, which
weren’t always the most “expected” of good times …
So, where are
you living now? What do you do with your time nowadays?
I’m in Pennsylvania. I live a couple
of miles from Penn State. I coached and taught there for many
years. I’ve been retired
 almost
20 years now. These days, I play golf in the nice weather and
racquetball in the cold weather. We have a group of us that meet
and play, and get together for the day and tell the same lies
(laughs). It’s a nice life out here. We’re out in the country. I
have an old house that was built in 1920. My wife and I are
active in the community. One of my sons, Chris, lives with his
wife and two kids in the area. My older son just retired, and he
lives down in Virginia. My other son is in Mount Lebanon,
Pennsylvania, and my daughter is in the Philadelphia area.
Everyone is in a 200-mile radius, which is nice. Next week we’re
all going to meet in Cape May, New Jersey.
Back in your
playing days, could you ever have imagined you’d one day be
inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame? Can you describe what
that induction day was like?
Well, we were taken in as a
team, in 1976. The Hall was in Philly, then, and it was the same
summer obviously as all of the big bicentennial celebrations.
Our whole team was taken in at that time in a team induction.
The Hall did that once before with the 1930 team, although when
they took them in, most of them were already gone. About half a
dozen of us made the ceremony. It was certainly an honor. But
what I remember from the day is something else altogether. The
president of the federation, Walt Geisler, the President of the
Federation at the time, was at the convention in Philadelphia,
presenting all of us, and he took a seizure during the
presentation,. They carried him off the stage, and a few hours
later, Walter had passed away. The ironic part was that Bill
Jeffrey, our old coach, was giving a speech up in New York in
the early 1960s, and the same thing happened to him, he fell on
the stage and later died. At two conventions, two key people,
the coach and the GM, both giving speeches, both had seizures
and heart attacks. So, at the convention in ‘76, as I was
captain, I took over for Walter and introduced the rest of the
team. I remember more of that event than the honor that went
along with it.
How was the
transition from playing to coaching? What did you learn about
the game of soccer through coaching?
My coaching career goes back to the
1940’s and 50’s. I was a freshman coach at Swarthmore College,
and I coached in high schools for 20 years. While I was in
Philly, I took the Temple job and coached there part-time for
three years, and then put in 15 years at Penn State. I had 40
years coaching at the
 school
level. I coached basketball, baseball, and tennis, but soccer
was the main sport. It’s a natural progression, from playing to
coaching. As a player, you think you know everything. When you
start coaching, you realize that it’s not so much the skills of
the game or the strategy, it’s handling of people and getting
them in the right positions, gaining team camaraderie. There’s
no clear way. Each team is different. You don’t always win when
you have your best players, and you don’t always lose when you
think you don’t have your best players. It takes a while for the
chemistry to show itself. You can’t make prejudgments. It takes
time to realize what they can and cannot do. I really think it’s
a learning process. Most players who have played and get into
coaching, they realize this very quickly. All sports are simple,
really, or at least they’re easy to learn, but difficult to
master. Everyone has their own personalities. The coaching
“schools” are good to a point, but what works for one coach
doesn’t work for another. If you can coach one sport, you can
coach another. It’s a matter of style. The better coaches
understand players.
I think you learn from your own
coaches. You try to pick out what works, and eliminate what
doesn’t. The important thing is developing your own personality.
Your handling of the team is important. It’s something that is
passed on from player to player. Players learn to understand
what the coach wants. Your reputation is important as a
consistent handling of players. It takes time to build up your
reputation as a coach, just as it does when you’re a player.
There’s no clear-cut answer. There’s good players who are bad
coaches, and vice versa. Over a period of time, the guy who
doesn’t necessarily win all of the time, but who turns out a
team that plays well and conducts itself well is a good coach.
Sometimes your best coaching is with a losing team. How would
you compare players of today with players of your era?
Well, certainly the numbers have
increased. In all sports it can be very dangerous to compare the
eras of players, to see if we’re getting better, if we’re the
same, or if we’re worse. Good players in my day were good
players. Good players today are good players. I can’t compare
players today to players of the 1930s. Players today can’t make
the same judgments. You cant compare it. It’s a guessing game. I
know they’re bigger, stronger, and faster. Skill-wise, they’re
probably better, but I’m not certain. You’re selling people
short by saying that players weren’t good athletes. There were
different conditions. A good player that played 50 years ago
would be a good player today, a poor player, same thing. The
difference is, and this is in all sports, is that they all look
like football players—bigger, stronger, so forth. It’s an
exercise in futility to compare players of different eras. The
big question used to be was if Jack Dempsey fought Joe Lewis,
who would win? Well, they’ll never get together, so it’s an
impossible situation. Everything has improved in all of the
sports, from field conditions to coaching. The best players
still play for the highest-level teams. Obviously, things get
better. Some of the sports going today have become more of a
business then a sport. It’s not as fun lifting weights, and
doing all these things to improve body strength. Back then, you
did enough on the field and at practice. You weren’t spending 12
months a year on body conditioning. Baseball players had four
months off. Today, everyone is on a 12-month training program.
To me, that takes the fun out of it. It should be fun. It’s just
how it is now. There’s so much pressure and money involved. You
can’t compare the two. You can only talk about eras.
What are
your favorite soccer memories?
Well, playing, coaching, watching my
own kids play … it becomes one big collection of memories. I
don’t know that I have a favorite thing. Everyone talks about
the 1950 Cup. I played professionally for 25 years. I played a
lot of games. Everyone remembers the Cup game, it’s gotten more
publicity than any other game I played in, but I played in a lot
of games. I remember my first game, in which I played for a
youth championship, and we played extra periods for the
championships. I can name my team when I was 11 or 12 years old.
I can remember trying out for my high school team. I was 15 when
I was signed by a professional team. There was not much money
involved, but it was still a professional league. The 1950 game
has received the most notoriety, and people ask me about it, and
its become a bigger thing in recent years. But certainly, teams
that I coached, I had one that won the city championships in
Philly, and these are great memories. I coached at Temple and we
won the league one year. At Penn State we played in the NCAA
championship tournament nearly every year. It does a disservice
to pick one memory. They were all good teams. Some teams won
more than others. The best team I had at Penn State didn’t get
invited to the NCAA’s because we lost a couple of games early,
but I thought it was the best playing team we had. The Hall of
fame was an honor, as was being selected to the Pennsylvania
Hall of Fame and the Philly Old Timers group. They’re all honors
and nice to see, but there are plenty of guys more deserving who
didn’t get in. That’s all.
- July 2004 -
Where
Are They Now
Jill Beauchesne of the the U.S.
National Soccer Team Player Association and the on-line journal
Round Not Oval reports her conversation with Hall of Famers in
our newest feature. |
