First Pitch

Unearthing the birthplace of soccer in Philadelphia.

by Joseph Freeman

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Published: Jun 25, 2008

mike m. koehler FOR KICKS: Jerry Brindisi (left) and Bobby "D" DiBenedetto, coaches at Northeast Catholic and Penn Charter respectively, survey the hallowed grounds of Lighthouse Field. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

To the pleasant astonishment of our two tour guides, the old stone bleachers were still standing. They were crawling with overgrown foliage and split through with tree roots, and with their archaic appearance, looked like Machu Picchu ruins transplanted to an old soccer field in Northeast Philadelphia.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one willing to wax archeological.

"It's like the pyramids!" exclaimed the head soccer coach at Penn Charter, known to friends and Philly soccer personages as Bobby "D" DiBenedetto, a garrulous, clean-cut guy in a button down shirt and tie. We had also just picked up Jerry Brindisi, the shorter and skinnier but equally verbose and knowledgeable head coach at Northeast Catholic. The two had taken their afternoon to show me all the old and venerated soccer haunts for which Kensington, Fishtown and Port Richmond are famous. We kicked things off at the famed crushed cinder block arena of Newt's field, which is enclosed between lengthy Frankford Avenue and the Berks El stop, the train of which crawled watchfully above us as we surveyed the ashen pitch. After making short stops at other known playgrounds, schoolyards, recreation centers and fields, we had arrived at our main destination, Lighthouse Field.

Situated at Front and Erie, across from St. Christopher's hospital, "Lighthouse Field" is spoken of with a reverence verging on the divine by those who came through its grassy ranks.

"It's the Mecca of Philadelphia soccer," replied Brindisi when I asked him about its significance. Bobby D. deemed it "The birthplace of Philadelphia soccer." But on a Friday afternoon, with a light wind bending back the overgrown grass, with not a shin-pad or cleat-wearing youngster in sight, I found it hard to summon the same grand analogies. The quiet, serene expanse felt like a sacred space, like a hallowed civil war battleground, and I tried to imagine all that had taken place there.

When the United States played England in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, a tournament which had been on hiatus since 1938 due to World War II, Walter Bahr passed the ball to Joe Gaetjens who knocked it in for a 1-0 victory, creating one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. Bahr was playing at the time for the Philadelphia Nationals of the professional American Soccer League, along with a teammate, Bernard McLaughlin, who had also made the cut for the US team but strangely was prohibited from playing when his boss refused to give him time off work. Bahr is known as one of the greatest American soccer players, and after retiring he went on to coach successfully at both Temple University and Penn State. Three of his sons played professional soccer and two of them, Chris and Matt, taking somewhat of an athletic detour, became skilled field-goal kickers in the NFL. But before Bahr ever made that historical assist in 1950, before McLaughlin ever got the job that would eventually bar him from the bright lights in Brazil, and indeed before the feature film "The Game of Their Lives" portrayed that sublime 1-0 upset over England, they were two amongst hundreds of other young boys vying for the ball at Lighthouse Field.

Soccer arrived in Philadelphia, especially to neighborhoods like Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Kensington, at the turn of the 20th century with the arrival of the latest wave of European immigrants, who brought with them a passion for the game. They became the rank and file of the factories and textile mills of Philadelphia.

Lighthouse Field was a physical extension of Lighthouse Boys Club, which was founded in 1897 by social reformers as a place designed to implement programs aimed at assisting immigrant families and their children's transition to American life. Its founders tapped into the soccer talents of its constituency and soon created the Lighthouse Boys Club team, which hosted the local talents, some of whom matured into world-class professionals.

Smith, who grew up in Kensington watching his father play soccer, eventually came into his own as a competitor. By the 1950s, he found himself playing with the successful Kensington Bluebelles. The tapestry of ethnicity was enriched over the years, and Smith found himself sized up against a variety of immigrants of varying origins. "We were thrown into competition with seasoned players of Italian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Armenian and German descent. Just a few years removed from the end of World War II, soccer in Philadelphia took on an even more ethnic flavor as European immigrants flowed into the city."

From the late 1950s through the '80s, high schools both private and public emerged as the formal settings in which players honed their talents. Northeast, Frankford, Cardinal Dougherty and Northeast Catholic were the soccer powerhouses of the city.

As Philadelphia prepares to host its first MLS franchise team and is constructing a stadium in Chester to be ready for action in 2010, it's easy to feel that soccer is something new here. The hilariously fanatic and inspired fan club "Sons of Ben," already have scarves, shirts, songs and chants touting their adored but invisible squad, and travel to other cities to taunt other teams in the name of one that doesn't exist. This makes sense in a city largely unaware of its own rich soccer tradition.

In researching this story, I've come to realize just how interconnected the fields, schools, playgrounds and personalities of Philadelphia soccer all are. If you grew up playing soccer in the past century in Philadelphia, you've played at Lighthouse Field and have heard of the ennobled soccer past of Northeast Catholic and their rivals like Frankfurt and Cardinal Dougherty.

To grasp this, you need only quickly survey all the head soccer coaches in the area. Temple's Dave MacWilliams, Drexel's Lew Meehl and Woody Hartman all graduated from Frankford. St. Joe's Tom Turner, and erstwhile Villanova coach Larry Sullivan are all Northeast Catholic grads, as well as our tour guides Bobby D. and Jerry Brindisi. And of course, so was "the greatest American soccer player" on that 1950 World Cup Team, Walter A. Bahr.

Even today, as soccer has sprawled out from the Northeast into suburban neighborhoods and private schools, bolstered and reinforced by enormous clubs like DELCO (Delaware County Soccer League), Philadelphia maintains its link with the past and its connection to the future of the sport. I spoke with MLS and New England Revolution player Chris Albright on Thursday evening as he prepared for his game against DC United. Albright, from Kensington, is Larry Sullivan's nephew. He played at Penn Charter, the school Bobby D. coaches now. When I introduced myself and explained I was doing a story on the history of Philadelphia soccer, Albright immediately responded, "So I guess you've been to Lighthouse then?"

Before Albright joined the New England Revolution, he played for the L.A. Galaxy with American soccer's supposed savior, David Beckham. From cinderblock fields to bending it with Beckham. It makes you wonder, is there another sport in Philadelphia, or anywhere else for that matter, with such a cabalistic, or, to be less sensational, familial feel attached to it? "We're a very tight group," Brindisi summarized.

Perhaps all these games against one another on hardscrabble fields of cinderblock, glass and gravel created a kind of Philadelphia soccer style. I asked Sullivan about this, who expanded on the theme. "There used to be a saying in the pros, 'oh, he's a Philly player.' You know, we played rough and hard. We were the original Broad Street Bullies."

Bobby D. and Jerry Brindisi sat on their old bleachers, still incredulous at the longevity of these seats. "We never used to sit here anyway," joked Brindisi, "everyone was always crowded around the fields." The two men got up and walked through the grass. Two baseball fields are situated next to the soccer fields at Lighthouse. They walked from the goal posts through the outfield, ceaselessly recalling this game and that game, forgetting about us for a moment and accomplishing what I'd been trying to do all along — conjuring up the past.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

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