January 22 (1922)

A St. Louis team qualifies for the National Challenge Cup (today’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup) championship game for the third consecutive year as Scullin Steel routs the Detroit Caledonians, 4-0, in the Western final at High School Field, Grand and Laclede avenues. About 5,000 fans watch as Scullin requires just 5 minutes to open the scoring. A kick by the Detroit goalkeeper rebounds off the shins of Scullin’s Jim “Dike” Brannigan into the net. Allie Schwarz scores two more in the first half, and Brannigan strikes again 10 minutes into the second half. “The contest was another triumph for the American style of football as against that employed by foreign athletes,” Herman Wecke will write in the next day’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Ten of the Caledonians’ starters are from Scotland and the 11th hails from England. Future U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame journalist Dent McSkimming bemoans the behavior of the fans in his game coverage in the next day’s St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He writes, “The treatment accorded the Caledonians by the fans was a direct incentive to rough play and was really the cause of two fights with almost ruined an otherwise fine game.”Scullin, which had lost in the 1921 Cup final to Robins Dry Dock, will go on to defeat Todd Shipyard, 3-2, in the 1922 final, giving St. Louis its second National Challenge Cup championship in three years. The three-year streak began in 1920 when Ben Miller defeated Fore River (Mass.), 2-1, for the first of 90 national soccer titles won by St. Louis teams.