“It wasn’t much of a party for the team from New York,” said Eppy, who made his living as a machinist for the South Side Machine Works while doing his part in Kutis’ many successes. “I remember they didn’t really have a chance in the game.
“It probably wasn’t the most exciting Final ever played,” Eppy added.
What Eppy remembered best were the differences from his day to today. “The game’s so different,” he said. “I see guys today passing the ball around their own penalty area. The last thing I wanted to do was jack around with the ball near my own goal. You make a bad pass back there and it’s Goodnight Irene.
“If I played around with the ball back there, back then, I would have heard it from Harry…”
The Man, the Myth and the Legend…
That Harry is one Harry Keough, legend of the American game and a teammate of Eppy’s in that outstanding Kutis team of 1957. Such was the quality of soccer coming out of the city of St. Louis at the time, five members of the Starting XI of the USA’s 1950 World Cup team – the one that famously beat the English in one of the World Cup’s biggest upsets – came from their local league.
“Back then we played with four attacking players and we had some really good forwards,” Eppy remembered, not laboring much on the celebrations and the lifting of the Cup or the one-sided 6-1 scoreline of that ‘57 Final.
