Portland Profiles: The 1975 Timbers

John Polis

Special to Prost Amerika

When the Portland Timbers make the slow walk onto the pitch at Mapfre Stadium in Columbus this Sunday, each player will carry with him a deep-rooted spirit that was kindled long before there was a Timbers Army and long before Major League Soccer was even a gleam in anyone’s eye.

Forty years ago in 1975, the first edition of the Portland Timbers started it all. In their final four home games of that first magical season, they drew crowds of 17,765, 18,278, 27,310 and 23,003. In two playoff games (played in the same place as the current team), they packed in 31,523 and 33,503.

Looking back now, at the time it seemed like an aberration or a one-off. How could a team develop a fan base from scratch, and in the space of four months become the hottest Oregon sports story in years? It was an incredible set of circumstances that sparked what, in the short span of four months, literally changed the city’s name, from Portland to “Soccer City USA.”

It didn’t happen overnight — but almost. When the announcement of the team came out in January of 1975 that professional soccer, in the form of the North American Soccer League, was coming to the Rose City, it didn’t create much of a stir. Those were the days when Portland was a two-newspaper town and neither was impressed.

Sportswriters at The Oregonian (morning) and the Oregon Journal (afternoon) were weary of new teams. For many months, both staffs had been covering the ups and downs of the gridiron World Football League and our local team, the Portland Storm, was about ready to fold. Portland’s only “big” team (the Trail Blazers) was only five years old, and though it would win an NBA championship two years later, success to that point had been fleeting.

So what was one to make of a soccer team coming to Portland, when most everyone in the city didn’t have a clue about the sport?

Not only did the announcement come out of the blue, but it came just four months before the first game. There were no players, coach, nickname or any kind of local tradition for the professional game. The only thing that was certain was that games would be played in crumbling Portland Civic Stadium on a first-generation, badly worn artificial turf.

The ownership group, composed mostly of individual local investors, did have a general manager. He was (of all things) a former all-pro NFL defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and the Chicago Cardinals named Don Paul, who was from Fife, Wash., and had played in college at Washington State. He starred on the great early 1950s Cleveland teams, coached by the legendary Paul Brown. His teammates were hall of famers Otto Graham and Jim Brown, and Don, himself, was selected to four pro bowls.

Paul was a gridiron football guy who was selling soccer. But whatever he lacked in terms of knowledge of the game, he made up for it with his enthusiasm for the new team and the thrill of bringing the sport to Portland. Ever the gregarious, smiling promoter, he made friends easily and soon was on the speaking circuit, hitting all the service clubs where he could win new fans.

The fun-loving Paul was once spotted walking down Broadway inside the Timbers’ mascot suit, which actually was a makeshift tree (like the one at Stanford University), making conversation about the team with passers-by. Clearly, he and his five-person staff were under the gun to take his product to market, yet he didn’t have customers who could understand what they were being sold and why they should buy it.

“Don understood what our priorities were,” says Dennis O’Meara, who grew up in the Mt. Tabor area of Portland, graduated from the University of Oregon, and at age 24 became the team’s first public relations director. “We had so little time to put things together and he knew everything wouldn’t get done. He just told us to prioritize things as best we could.”

Fortunately for Paul, he found O’Meara through Oregon Journal sports editor George Pasero, who had employed O’Meara part-time in the sports department. Dennis loved the game, had played it in college, and had been an officer with the Oregon Intercollegiate Soccer Association. He also had coached the Portland State and University of Portland soccer clubs, whose members were primarily foreign students on campus.

Working with Gerber Advertising, the Timbers put together a name-the-team contest. O’Meara recalls that the name “Pioneers” came out on top, but Pasero advised Paul that it couldn’t be Pioneers because that was already the name of the sports teams at Lewis and Clark College. Days later he was sitting for his job interview when Paul’s phone rang.

It was from Pasero, so Don took it, shouting into the phone: “Timberrrrr!!” That was it. The nickname stuck, but without Pasero’s advice, the team walking out on Sunday might be the Pioneers, the Steelheads or something else.

The first player

In early March, the team’s first player arrived. He was Mick Hoban, a 23-year-old defender originally from the Midlands of England (Tipton) who already had logged seasons with both Atlanta and Denver after starting his career at Aston Villa. Mick and his lovely wife, Linda, were staying at the Mallory Hotel. An interview found him welcoming and friendly, and he promised he’d help the rookie reporter to learn the game as we went along.

Looking back, how appropriate that the first interview with the first Timber player took place just a few blocks from the home field where every Portland Timbers team has played since 1975.

That same month, the rest of the Timber players and their coach, Vic Crowe, arrived on a single flight and the press was there to greet them. Crowe, a Welsh international who just four years prior (1971) had guided Aston Villa to the Football League Cup final, also had managed at Peterborough and was a player coach at Atlanta in the NASL.

Two players from that League Cup final team were on the plane. Brian Godfrey, 35-year-old midfielder, would be the team captain, and fleet-footed Willie Anderson, a seasoned pro at age 28 who arguably was the team’s flashiest player. Indeed, the future would reveal that there were two other future Timbers that started on that Aston Villa cup final team—Brian Tiler, who would both play and coach the Timbers, and Pat McMahon, who had a lengthy stay with the Timbers and still lives in Portland today.

The most experienced of the new Timber players was rock solid, 30-year-old defender Ray Martin, who in the previous 13 years had made 333 appearances for Birmingham City. Martin, like most all the players, came on loan, but later would return and finish his career in the United States with Portland and Minnesota. He also stayed and made Oregon his home.

The rest of the players were a concoction of wide-eyed rookies, three or four-year players who were hoping to break into their English first teams, and two American players. NASL rules required that there be at least two Americans on each roster, but there was no requirement for playing time. Eventually, the league would implement rules that would require a minimum number of Americans be on the field during games.

The benevolent taskmaster

Crowe, 43, was known as a hard man to play for who demanded discipline. But there was no one who appreciated a good effort more and who showed his loyalty to his players’ effort than Vic. Since he had spent time in Atlanta, he understood the arid nature of the American soccer landscape, and knew what he was getting into by coming to Portland.

Bringing soccer to the Rose City would be like an American baseball manager taking a cobbled-together baseball team to Crowe’s own native coal country. There would be a tremendous amount of work for his team to do off the field. The media would have to be won over, and he was a master at it. From the first day, he always had time for reporters and answered all the goofy questions we threw out, all the while surely stifling a bit of laughter.

Adapting to the conditions

At the time, Civic Stadium was used mainly for baseball. The field was a Tartan surface, manufactured by 3M, and was hard as a rock. Timber goalkeeper Graham Brown wore long pants, as did all visiting goalkeepers to protect their legs and knees. The field had baseball cutouts, and there were seams in the carpet that affected the roll of the ball.

A team on a shoestring

It’s important to know how Portland got its NASL franchise in the first place. A group of local private investors, led by Portland businessmen John Gilbertson, Don Pollock, Dr. Gus Proano, Keith Williams and others, formed an ownership group. Stock was available for a minimum $5,000 investment in blocks of $1,000. It was reported at the time that there were approximately 300 members of the ownership group, but we never knew for sure how many people had a piece of the team.

The great Pelé comes out of retirement

The league was in for a jolt of energy in 1975. Brazilian legend Pelé was coming out of retirement to sign a three-year, $7.2 contract with the New York Cosmos (which was owned by Warner Communications). A typical game that year with New York took on enormous new meaning because the most popular and successful player of all time would be coming to town. Every pregame and postgame was a circus around Pelé. Unfortunately, the Timbers’ lone game against the Cosmos that year was in New York and Portland fans would have to wait a year until they got to see El Rei in person.

The 1975 season: A wet start

The first home game was in early May and it must have poured for 24 hours prior to the game. The opponent was the Seattle Sounders and it wouldn’t take long for the two teams to become arch rivals. Despite the horrible weather and the fact that the Timbers lost 1-0, the game drew 6,913 fans. Portland had gotten its first glimpse of its new team, but it was impossible to tell if this team had something special.

As it turned out, this would be the only home loss in 11 home games that year. The team would be very special, indeed.

After starting off 1-2, the Timbers went on a rampage by winning 12 games in a row, a record that would be difficult to top in any soccer league today. The team also won 12 home games in a row after that first loss to Seattle. Attendances built slowly from week to week. Because of the scheduling, there were several big gaps between home games, but it was clear that Portlanders were warming up to soccer. It was different. It was cool. The stadium was the hip place to be when the Timbers were playing. And Portland finally had a winner. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

The season chugged along and the fans loved having a winner on their hands. It all boiled down to an important road trip in July where the team would play four games in nine days, two of them back-to-back.

The Timbers opened with a 3-1 over Hartford on goals by Graham Day, Peter Withe and Tony Betts. The very next day, the Timbers were in Boston to play the Minutemen, a team beset by off-the-field issues. There was even a question whether or not the game would be played. The game went on and Portland lost, 2-1. Later, O’Meara would get called on the carpet by league officials after calling Boston the Minute-by-Minutemen in his press release.

Then it was on to New York’s Randall’s Island Stadium where the Timbers beat the Cosmos and Pelé 2-1 (goals by Godfrey and Withe) and three days later capped off an amazing trip with a dramatic 3-2 overtime win over St. Louis (goals by Barry Lynch, Tommy McLaren and Withe). Amazingly the Timbers returned home with three wins in four road games and were very much in the hunt for the championship.

By the time the Timbers hosted Seattle for the second time in league play (July 26), support for the team was at a fever pitch. The home crowd (27,310) surpassed the season’s largest by almost 10,000 and fans were treated to a 2-1 win on the strength of Withe’s two goals. Soccer had indeed arrived in Portland. The Timbers won their final home game 3-2 over the San Jose Earthquakes on another two goals by Withe and a third by Barry Powell. Portland lost its two final away games, 3-2 in overtime to Seattle and 1-0 to the Los Angeles Aztecs, but it didn’t matter. They were in the championship round.

Playoff fever

There would be two hurdles to making the final, which was called Soccer Bowl-75. Because of its superior record (16-6) the Timbers would be at home. Tickets went on sale a couple of days before the first playoff game and the fact that the opponent was Seattle made everything even more exciting. Lines for tickets backed up all the way back up 18th Street and around in front of the Multnomah Athletic Club. Crowe, never one to miss an opportunity to endear his players to the fans, had the boys take their warm-up jog outside the stadium to pass by the fans, who were delirious in their appreciation. Approximately 27,000 tickets were sold in three hours for the Seattle game, and the final turnstile count was 31,523.

That first playoff game, at least until the recent shootout victory over Kansas City, might have been the most dramatic in Timbers history. Betts was on the bench for most of the game when Crowe sent him in to create some havoc in front of the goal in a game that was well into overtime. The Timbers were all over Seattle as wingers Anderson and Kelly pumped chance after chance into the middle. Finally, one of Anderson’s crosses found the head of Betts, who buried it.

Pandemonium. Fans spilled out onto the field to honor the players. One particularly creative fan was running along the touchline with a banner that said: “Kelly for Mayor.” For those who were at that game, it remains the defining moment of Timbers soccer, a moment never to be forgotten.

Five days later, the Timbers did it all over again. Another playoff game and it was fitting that the last game of ’75 to be played in Portland that year began just as the first — on a field soaked by day-long rains. By game time the skies had cleared but there were standing puddles of water on the field. During the game, one St. Louis player, Mike Seery, having face-planted in one of the puddles, started doing the breast stroke before he got up, evoking laughter from the crowd of more than 33,000. Once again, it was the ever-present Withe scoring the only goal to send the Timbers, a team that only six months earlier had no players, to the final, Soccer Bowl-75.

Portland fell short in the final, losing to another English player-laden side, the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The game took place at a neutral site, Spartan Stadium on the campus of San Jose State University. Goals by future Timber player Clyde Best and defender Arsene Auguste sealed the 2-0 win for the Rowdies, who took home the NASL championship.

The traditions live on

The first-year Timbers had a great team that played together and played for each other. But if you speak with any of the players 40 years later, their most vivid memories involved the fans. From the beginning the team’s front office made an effort to get the players to be accessible to the public, which was unheard of in those days.

After each home game there was a post-game party at the Benson Hotel — everyone invited. Halfway through the season, you would be hard pressed to find any fan who at some point had not spoken personally with a player. Players arrived early at home games and were stationed at various stadium entrances where they passed out roses to all the ladies. Each year the team held open tryouts for aspiring youngsters. Tickets were affordable, with an emphasis on inexpensive group packages and making going to the Timbers games a family activity. That spirit lives today. The early Timbers Booster Club and the mascot, Timber Jim Serrill continues today with the Timbers Army and Timber Joey.

Perhaps it was fate that Portland would become Soccer City USA. The events of one magical summer came together in a way that likely will never be repeated. It was that first bedrock-like foundation that cemented the sport in the hearts and minds of Portland sports fans, especially the kids who in the ensuing years would take up the game. The University of Portland became a collegiate soccer powerhouse. Oregon produced its own professional players who went on to become professional players and compete overseas. It all started in ’75.

Perhaps the most haunting image of that early birth of soccer in Portland actually appeared that fall during a gridiron football game. The Portland Storm was playing in one of its final games of the season at Civic Stadium before its final demise. Following the game, the paper ran a photo of game action and in the background you could see a clearly legible sign from the soccer playoffs that hinted of a new era in Portland sports. No one had bothered to take it down. It read, simply: “Soccer City USA.”

John Polis was the original Timbers beat writer for The Oregonian, covering the team in the 1975 and 1976 seasons. Polis later went on to become the director of communications for the U.S. Soccer Federation, director of communications for Umbro, and attended five FIFA world championship events as a USA press officer. He lives in Brighton, Colorado.

 

Also See:

How the Columbus Crew SC defense evolved its way to the MLS Cup final

Alan Hinton: Sounders fans should support the Timbers on Sunday

Timbers confirm log will travel to Columbus

Cascadia Corner Player of the Year 2015: Jorge Villafana

Portland Profiles: Sunday White, taking a stand just by living her life

Crew SC urge fans to arrive early amid increased security

UPDATED: Timber Joey’s Log will be at MLS Cup final but not inside stadium

Portland Profiles: Timber Jim, I’d drive the log to Columbus!

Cause for Celebration.

Cascadia Corner: At last, our boasting is real!