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 Jim Brown grew up in the famous
Scottish golfing center of Troon in Ayrshire, Scotland, but was
actually born in a hospital in nearby Kilmarnock. He was the
oldest in a family of four boys and three girls. His brother
John, a goalkeeper who played for Hibernian and Clyde, earned a
Scottish cap and a Scottish Cup Medal, and Tom, the youngest was
the goalkeeper for Ipswich Town for many years. All four
brothers were scratch golfers. Jim started caddying at the Old
Troon at the age of 10, and left school at the age of 13 to
serve a full 5-year apprenticeship as a ship's riveter at the
Troon shipyard. Although he kicked the ball around with local
teams, he never played organized soccer in Scotland. At the age
of 19 he sailed to the United States to seek his father who had
effectively deserted the family several years earlier.
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Personal Information |
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Class of 1986 |
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Born:
December 31, 1908 - Kilmarnock, Scotland |
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Died: November 9, 1994 - Berkeley Heights, NJ |
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Position:
Outside Right |
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Int'l
Caps: 4 |
Int'l
Goals: 1 |
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On arrival, he lived in Westfield,
NJ, where he worked in a factory doing light riveting.
Although he found his father in Westfield they were not
reconciled. He first signed for Bayonne Rovers a local team in
New Jersey, and then for Newark in the American and Eastern
Soccer leagues during the 1928-29 season. Early in 1930 he
signed as a professional for the New York Giants in the Atlantic
Soccer League for $50.00 per game. The team was then owned by
Maurice Vandeweghe. Three months after signing he was selected
to play for the U.S. National Team, for which he was eligible due
to his father’s status as a U.S. citizen. On June 13, 1930 the
team set sail on a 14-day sea journey to Montevideo, Uruguay on
the liner the SS Munargo. For the entire trip, which lasted
almost three months, each player received a total of $300 and a
suit of clothes. Contrary to a mythology, which developed due to
poor research, this was an American team, not a British one. The
performance of the U.S. team was attributed over the years to the
supposed presence of six former English and Scottish
professional players. The fact was that there were six players
in the U.S. team who had been born in England or Scotland, however
four of these had moved to the U.S. as teenagers and had never
played professionally in the UK as was also the case with Jim.
Only one player on the team had played professionally in
Britain, and that consisted of two games in the Third Division.
The U.S. placed third in this, the
first-ever World Cup. These were the days of no substitutions
and Jim played in all three games in which the U.S. took part,
with the U.S. beating Belgium and Paraguay by identical 3-0
scores. Wilfred Cummings, the manager of the U.S. team described
the third goal against Belgium as follows "Midway through
the second half a beautiful run by Brown, on the right wing, and
an unselfish lob over the goalie’s head to Patenaude, in the
center, chalked up number three and marked one of the most
brilliant plays in the entire tournament." With these two
impressive wins under their belt the U.S. team was being touted as
"dark horse" favorites to win the tournament, but it
was not to be. The semi-final against Argentina turned out to be
a brutal match marked by cynical fouling which resulted in the
U.S. team ending up with only 8 uninjured players, and on the
short end of a 6-1 score. Jim scored the only U.S. goal in the
89th minute. The game was played at the brand new Centenario
Stadium on a field which measured 100 yards wide and 138 yards
long, and in front of a crowd which has been variously estimated
at either 80,000 or 112,000 spectators. Security was extremely
tight and prior to the game Jim was shown one of the sheds next
to the turnstiles in which the police had stacked piles of
weapons including machetes which were being taken from fans as
they entered the stadium.
He returned home in September to find
that the Giants had been sold to new owners and renamed the New
York Soccer Club. He went on to play the fall season for New
York but in the spring of 1931 moved on to the Brooklyn
Wanderers.
In 1932 he returned to the UK on the
liner Caledonia. A number of Scottish and English League
managers had been alerted to his arrival and were waiting at the
dock in hopes of signing him. But Scott Duncan, the manager of
Manchester United stole a march on all of them by paying the tug
boat pilot to take him out to the ship before it docked. Once on
board he quickly signed Jim to a contract and then Duncan
gleefully marched down the gangplank with him much to the
chagrin of the other managers. During his career Jim, who played
center forward or right winger, was a prolific goal scorer. While
with Manchester he played 40 games and scored 17 goals, which
made him the second highest goal scorer on the team in each of
two seasons. In his first game with Manchester United on
September 17, 1932 he scored direct from a corner kick in a
Second Division game against Grimsby Town. He was tall,
two-footed, and although not fast he had a deceptive change of
pace and an elegant upper-body swerve. His shot was not
powerful, but precise, and at 5’ 11", which was quite
tall in those days, he had an extraordinary ability to get up in
the air and score with his head. Despite his goal scoring he did
not last long with Manchester United. In fact he had a
disappointing career in first division soccer, which was
attributed primarily to his outspoken union activism. In those
days players were considered chattel and had no legal rights
whatsoever. The typical weekly wage for a first team player was
6-7 pounds sterling, with a bonus of 2 pounds for a win and 1
pound for a draw. Second, or reserve team players would get a
weekly wage of 5 pounds, with reduced bonuses for wins and
draws. According to Jim, players would not even be acknowledged
by the team’s directors, and were never allowed to set foot in
the boardroom. And heaven help anyone who breathed the word ‘union".
A handful of top players who attempted to form a mild form of
Players’ Association in the 20’s and 30’s were effectively
blackballed and their careers ruined. It was not until the early
60’s that players began to be represented and the wage
structure improved.
He was transferred to Brentford in May
1934 where he appeared at inside and center forward, but even
there he was relegated to the reserve team, scoring 53 goals in
73 games. Tottenham Hotspur was his next stop in September,1936
but again most of his appearances were in the reserve team,
where he scored 21 goals in 30 games. His final move in English
soccer was to Guilford City in the Southern League where he
scored 148 goals in 150 appearances. He scored a record 7 goals
in one game against Exeter City, five with his head. Before
retiring in 1939, plagued with cartilage problems, he played a
couple of games with Clyde in the Scottish First Division,
playing center half in front of his brother John who was Clyde’s
goalkeeper. With the onset of the war he returned permanently to
Troon. Before leaving England he placed much of his belongings
in storage, including his scrapbook and memorabilia. Sadly,
before he could ship it to Scotland the storage shed was
destroyed by a V2 rocket. Fortunately he had carried with him
the manager’s report from the first World Cup along with his
medal and a pair of U.S. team shorts. The medal and shorts are now
on display at the Hall of Fame along with some of his teammate’s
memorabilia. The manager’s report is preserved in the archives
for use by researchers.
Jim’s union activism almost had
tragic consequences for his brothers. When he returned to Troon
he resumed riveting with the four brothers forming a riveting
squad. Because this was considered essential war work they were
exempt from the draft. Jim discovered that the owners of the
shipyard were paying their riveters only half of that being paid
to other riveters in a neighboring shipyard. He demanded
equitable pay but the owners refused so he persuaded the other
three brothers to down tools and go on strike. They were
immediately stripped of their exemption and placed into the
draft. Rather than being drafted John volunteered for the Navy,
Andrew the Merchant Marines, and Tom the Commandos. Ironically
Jim failed the physical due to punctured eardrums so he never
had to serve in the military during the war. They all survived
the war, but his brothers never let him forget it.
In 1948 he emigrated to the United
States where he took up residence in Greenwich, Connecticut and
commenced coaching the Greenwich High School team. He worked
variously as a window cleaner and gardener. Jim used to tell a
humorous story about deciding to see if he could possibly play
again in the American Soccer League. He traveled to Philadelphia
to play with the Philadelphia Nationals. As he tells the story,
he was playing at outside right and up against a young, but
unskilled fullback. He beat him again and again but each time
the fullback would recover and manage to get goalside of him. At
half-time he was exhausted and, while sitting on the bench
trying to recover an older league official came up to him and
asked his name. He said "Jim Brown’, whereupon the
official said "Well Brown, I’ve been watching you
carefully. You keep it up. You have a future in this game".
He was 41 years old!
Jim established the Connecticut State
Amateur League in 1950, serving as President, and also formed
Greenport United that same year. He traveled all over
Connecticut in an old ’42 Pontiac in order to form the league.
At age 42 he came out of retirement to play alongside his son
for two seasons, with Greenport winning the league championship
in 1951. Although normally a mild mannered man both on and off
the field, he would not back down from a fight. While serving as
President of the league he became concerned with violence on the
field and what he felt was lax refereeing. At the time there
were no such things as yellow and red cards. He called a meeting
of the referees and laid down the law, insisting that they take
better control of the games. The following Sunday he was ejected
from a game and suspended for fighting.
He later coached the Brunswick School
soccer team, in Greenwich, Connecticut, for 22 years as well as
the Polish Falcons of the American Soccer League in 1957 and
1958. Jim was married to Mary Cormack in 1932 and had two sons,
James and George, and one daughter Marilyn. His oldest boy James
died in 1946. Jim was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of
Fame in 1986 and, posthumously, to the Connecticut State Hall of
Fame in 2000. He and his son George, who was inducted in 1995,
are unique, in that they are the only father and son to be
inducted into the Hall of Fame as players. |
