STILL GETTING HIS KICKS : Walter Bahr Sent Sons Chris and Matt to Football, but Soccer Is His Real Love

Many of the pictures on the wall have familiar faces, those of Chris and Matt Bahr, both Super Bowl kickers. But the intriguing snapshot is a black and white photo of an unidentified soccer team.

On the far right of the second row is Walter Bahr.

To soccer fans, Walter Bahr is best known for his assist on the goal that beat England, 1-0, during the 1950 World Cup, one of the biggest upsets in soccer history. But to most Americans, he’s simply the father of two pro football placekickers.

“You almost had to drag it out of him,” says Matt, 32, about his father’s exploits. “One of the ways we found out about it was when we would eavesdrop when he would talk to reporters.”

Success in the Bahr family started with Walter. A native of Philadelphia who learned the game at the Lighthouse Boys Club in the Kensington section, Bahr became an All-American in 1944 at Temple.

He played on the 1948 U.S. Olympic team and the 1950 World Cup team as a midfielder, or in the lexicon of the day--a halfback. He later coached Temple in the early 1970s to a 20-12-10 record before moving in 1974 to Penn State, where he accumulated a record of 185-66-22.

He retired after the 1987 season as the school’s all-time winningest soccer coach, having taken Penn State to 13 NCAA tournaments, being named the National Soccer Coaches Assn. Coach of the Year in 1979, and being inducted into the U.S. Soccer Federation Hall of Fame in 1976.

And Bahr’s athletic genes were passed on to his children:

--Casey, 40, an All-American soccer player at Navy, a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team, and an early-season member of the 1973 North American Soccer League champion Philadelphia Atoms.

--Chris, 36, a three-time All-American in soccer at Penn State, 1975 NASL Rookie of the Year with the Philadelphia Atoms, a 13-year NFL veteran with Cincinnati and the Raiders and played on both the 1980 and 1983 Raider Super Bowl championship teams.

--Matt, 32, kicker for the Penn State football team while also playing soccer for the Nittany Lions, defender for the NASL Colorado Caribous and Tulsa Roughnecks, and a 10-year NFL veteran and member of the 1979 Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

--Davies Ann, 29, All-American gymnast at Penn State.

The tremendous athletic prowess in the family, according to Bahr’s wife--Davies--must come from her husband.

“I wasn’t even all-block,” she says.

But Walter Bahr isn’t, nor wasn’t according to his children, the typical Little League father.

“My father stressed performance, but shunned the accolades,” says Matt, who has been with the Cleveland Browns since the middle of the 1981 season. “One time my brother scored a goal and he ran around celebrating it, and my father told him, ‘Hey, you didn’t score that goal alone, 10 other guys helped you.’

“That’s why we jog off the field when we kick a game-winning field goal. By the same token, we can jog off slowly when we miss.”

And today, Walter Bahr is still shunning the spotlight.

“That was a long time ago,” he says when asked about the last time a U.S. team played in a World Cup. “It means a lot more now, knowing what the World Cup has become, than it did 40 years ago.”

But his memory of it is very clear.

“When we got to Brazil, we had about a week’s training together,” the 62-year-old Bahr recalls. “Against Spain, we led that game, 1-0, with eight minutes to play and there was a questionable call that led to Spain’s tying goal (Spain won, 3-1).

“In the second game we beat England, 1-0, and had a very good opportunity to score a second goal, that had to be saved by one of the defenders. The third game was against Chile, that was 2-2 late in the second half, (Chile won, 5-2). So in the three games we competed in every game. We could’ve lost all them, we could’ve won them all.

“The greatest thing we had going for us was the chemistry.”

It’s a chemistry that has endured the decades. According to Bahr, five of the 11 are still alive and he keeps in contact with them. He can tell you the story of his teammates, including Joe Gaetjens, the forward who redirected Bahr’s shot with a header on June 29, 1950, in Belo Horizonte to beat the English.

“Joe Gaetjens was executed by Papa Doc Duvalier’s regime,” Bahr said. “Gaetjens was a Haitian. We had three foreign-born players. Joe Maca was born in Belgium. Joe Gaetjens was born in Haiti and Joe McIlvenny was born in Scotland.

“These three had all been over long enough to be citizens and Joe Gaetjens he came up and played in New York for five or six years. After we came back from the World Cup, he went over to play with the Racing Club of Paris. And in the mid-to-late ‘50s he went back to Haiti to his family. That was when Duvalier took over and he was rounding up everybody.

“Joe had some family members who were involved politically, and they picked up Joe as a hostage--not because he was involved but to get at his family,” Bahr said. “They executed him shortly after he was picked up.”

And while for the last 15 years Bahr has toiled in the shadow of Penn State’s famous football coach Joe Paterno, Bahr’s accomplishments have not been lost on his two more famous sons.

“What my father did, doing it on his own, just picking up the game as a kid and the level he achieved, the accomplishments he had, if I were to put them against what Matthew, myself, Casey or my sister have done, I’d have to think that’s something more special,” said Chris, now with the San Diego Chargers.

“Winning a Super Bowl pales in comparison to participating in a World Cup,” Matt said. “That’s an accomplishment I would love to be able to share.”