Sept. 6 (1909)

Future U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Walter Giesler is born. Giesler will make his mark as a nationally prominent soccer administrator. He will put together and manage the 1950 U.S. World Cup team that will beat England 1-0, and will serve as president of the U.S. Soccer Football Association (today’s U.S. Soccer Federation) in 1948-49. Giesler will be a goalkeeper, referee and youth coach in the 1920s and 1930s. He and Charley McBride, father of future U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Pat McBride, will invent a game in the 1930s that St. Louis kids have played ever since: hoc-soc. The game will use a hockey-sized net and a soccer ball indoors. Giesler will run local amateur baseball leagues and the National Baseball Congress tournament, and will be a partner in Giesler Jorgen Sporting Goods. As a head honcho in soccer and baseball organizations, Giesler will make tough decisions and will weather the predictable criticism. “You can’t expect to win popularity contests,” he will tell Bob Burnes, the executive sports editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “But I’ll always do what I think is best for soccer . . . not for me, not for some player or coach or team . . . but for soccer.” The last thing Gieseler will do for soccer is inducting the entire 1950 U.S. World Cup team into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame on July 4, 1976, in Philadelphia. The 65-year-old Giesler will collapse while delivering his induction speech and will die the next day in a Philadelphia hospital. “He’ll be missed wherever soccer is cussed and discussed,” sports editor Bob Broeg will write in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a few days after Giesler’s death. “But all of us should be so fortunate as to be thinking and talking about our first love at the Final Whistle.”