Every sport and every generation has those moments – etched in the memory of those who saw them, or granted everlasting life on film. Athletes pushing through pain to become heroes. Willis Reed, limping onto the court to lead his Knicks to victory in game seven of the 1970 NBA finals. The Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson, hobbling to the plate on two taped legs to hit a two-out walk-off homer in the 1988 World Series.
Our U.S. Open Cup – for over a hundred years – has had those types of moments and heroes too, even if – for lack of formal visual evidence – you might have to imagine the details.
Willie Carson of the Los Angeles Kickers – who would score an astonishing 13 goals in five games – provided one of those moments in the 1958 Open Cup Final, though it passed under the radar in a City of Angels going crazy over its brand new Major League Baseball team, the (formerly Brooklyn) Dodgers.
A native of Scotland, Carson first moved across the Atlantic to America in the early 1950s, beginning a productive career with Toronto-based St. Andrews-Earlscourt of the National Soccer League. As one of the top scorers in the league, he earned its Most Valuable Player award in 1955.
Shortly after, along with a pair of his teammates, he left for the sunnier climes of Southern California and joined up with the Los Angeles Danes – who became the first West Coast team to play in an Open Cup Final (then known as the National Challenge Cup) in 1955.
After setting what local newspapers referred to as a West Coast scoring record with 54 goals over the 1956-57 season, Carson was tempted away to fellow Greater Los Angeles Soccer League (GLASL) side the Los Angeles Kickers. There, teaming up with club legend and former US National Team star and Olympian Al Zerhusen, he set the local soccer scene ablaze yet again.
The Kickers – a club founded by German immigrants – advanced out of the First Round of the 1958 U.S. Open Cup via a walkover against the LA Scots. Playing against former Scottish international Billy Steel, Carson then put the Kickers into the LA area finals with a pair of goals over Hollywood S.C.
Steel opened the scoring for the Hollywooders from the penalty spot, but two second-half goals by the irrepressible Carson inspired a 4-2 Kickers win at Sentinel Field in Inglewood.
Two weeks later, Carson powered the Kickers into a California Championship matchup against the Teutonias of San Francisco with a goal in a 3-1 win over St. Stephen’s. He set up the first goal, which Pete Rumohr bagged on a rebound. When St. Stephen’s tied it up before the half, Carson gave the Kickers another lead (2-1) before Zerhusen sealed the victory with a 30-yard blast.
In the series against the Northern California club, Carson and the Kickers really turned on the offensive jets, all but clinching a spot in the next round in the first 20 minutes of the first game.
Once again playing at Sentinel Field, Carson gave the Kickers the lead in the 10th minute off the rebound of his own shot. Five minutes later, Zerhusen, who was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1978, made it 2-0.
Although Teutonias goalkeeper Harry Lis came up with several big saves before leaving the game with an injury, the San Franciscans were no match for the Kickers. Friedel Scherer put home a penalty kick early in the second half after Bob Berger was taken down in the area. Carson then added two more goals to seal the 5-0 win, giving the Kickers an almost insurmountable lead in the total-goals series.
With Lis suffering a broken finger and having to leave the first game, 17-year old back-up goalkeeper George Long, who had never before played for the first team, was under siege from the opening whistle of the return match at Balboa Stadium in San Francisco.
With a 15-yard shot inside the first ten minutes, Carson again opened the scoring for the Angelinos. He then made it 2-0 seven minutes later off a pass from Osmond Tyrell.By the midpoint of the half, the dominant Kickers led 3-0 thanks to a further tally by the talisman Zerhusen.
Carson, who would go on to earn his only cap with the USMNT the next year, added two more goals in the second half as the Kickers pulled away for an 8-2 win and 13-2 aggregate in the series. That left one more match between them and the 1958 Final – a home field knockout game against the Chicago Lions.
Chicago slipped past defending Open Cup champion Kutis S.C. of Saint Louis in a two-game set, tying the first game 3-3 in the Windy City then winning 1-0 on the road. But they were no match for their LA-based opponents.
For the third straight game Carson scored the first goal for the Kickers. Zerhusen broke down the left wing and connected with the attacker, who slammed the ball past Lions goalkeeper Ferno Mercz. Rumohr and Zerhusen increased the margin in the second half to 3-0.
With the win, the Kickers became only the second West coast team to reach the Open Cup Final.
“We had [Al] Zerhusen and many other outstanding players and that made us one of the strongest teams in the area for years,” Eberhard Herz, a surviving member of that dominant era for the LA Kickers, told USopencup.com in the fall of 2024. “It was a different game back then, but we played it the right way.”
The Final against Baltimore Pompei was the tightest contest of the competition for the Kickers. A former sandlot team that turned pro and joined the American Soccer League in 1957, the surprising Pompei club made their way to the Final by defeating established East Coast powers the Philadelphia Ukrainians, Elizabeth (NJ) SC, Eintracht of New York and Beadling of Pennsylvania.
Like clockwork, Carson delivered again for the Kickers, scoring just eight minutes after the game kicked off at Baltimore’s Kirk Field. The wily inside right went around approaching Pompei goalkeeper Cyril Hannaby and easily put the ball in the net.
The Baltimore side tied the game in the 16th minute when JoJo Defonso scored a sensational overhead kick. For the next 74 minutes, both teams unleashed barrages on net as Hannaby (20 total saves) and Kickers goalkeeper Heinz Weizenbacher (17 total saves) stopped shot after shot to force overtime.
With less than 10 minutes remaining, Carson pounced on a rebound after Hannaby stopped a shot and moved out of his net, leaving the lethal Scot in front of an open goal. There was only ever going to be one outcome from there.
While they carried a brief wire report on the Final, the Los Angeles newspapers of the day were too focused on the 150,000 fans who attended three Dodgers games over the weekend to pay too much attention to the city’s first National Champion in the then-still niche sport of soccer.
It was three days later, when the Kickers touched down at LAX from New York following a 3-3 exhibition draw with Eintracht, that Carson’s heroics were truly revealed. Kickers’ business manager Albert Ebert told the local papers that the free-scoring Scot had badly injured his leg shortly after scoring the first goal. “Carson begged to return to the line-up in overtime,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Ebert as saying.
Carson limped onto the field and scored the winner. He was carried off the field by his teammates after the game. He continued to play for the Kickers and helped them to another Open Cup Final in 1960, scoring six goals against the San Francisco Scots in that year’s Quarterfinal.
He kicked around with other Southern California teams, scoring his last Open Cup goal in December 1967 with Scandia before moving into youth coaching. But it was that moment in Baltimore in 1958 that the hobbled Carson, much like MLB hero Kirk Gibson 30 years later, etched himself into Los Angeles sports legend and lore.
Charles Cuttone is a writer/author, historian and three-time winner of the National Soccer Coaches Association writing award.