His Space // editorial
FEW BETTER THAN BECKER
Late Hopkins, Mount Washington standout more than just an ex-jock
N
obody is perfect, but an old lacrosse player named Larry Becker came awfully close.
Dr. Larry Becker died Jan. 3 in an auto crash in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 77. The police said his car was struck on the driver’s side by another vehicle that had run a red light. “Larry was a special guy,” said Bob Scott, who coached him at Johns Hopkins in two sports in the late 1950s. Becker was a very good midfi elder in lacrosse and maybe even
more outstanding in basketball. Scott, a Hall of Fame lacrosse coach, was Becker’s freshman basketball coach. I saw Becker play basketball when I was covering a Hopkins game for the Baltimore Evening Sun. He was darn good. In the spring, there he was in lacrosse, more than holding his own on a national championship team. But Becker was more than an ex-jock. So much more. He was a highly accomplished orthopedic surgeon right up to the end. His partner, Dr. Jerome P. Reichmister, says Larry was an early proponent of arthroscopic surgery on the East Coast. Those who knew him well practically ran out of fl owery adjectives. “He had it all,” said Barry Levinson, who directed the 1982 movie, “Diner Guys,” and knew Larry since they were both diner guys themselves growing up in Baltimore. “He was smart, compassionate, good-looking, athletic, a successful doctor, always polite and gracious. Not many like him come our way.”
laxmagazine.com
Like Levinson, Becker went on to greater things.
“Any of those so-called diner guys would have given anything to be Becker,” said Richard Sher, himself a former diner guy who has had a long and successful TV career in Baltimore.
I didn’t even know Becker had become a doctor until one January day in 1970. Tom Matte, then a Baltimore Colts football player, told me he had played racquetball with Johnny Unitas the day before. Unitas thought Matte had hit him in the back of his leg with his racket. No way, said Matte.
“I drove John straight to Larry
Becker’s offi ce,” Matte said. “He told us John had torn his Achilles tendon.” Becker operated on Unitas, and the quarterback was ready for the league-opening game in September. There were nearly a thousand people at Becker’s funeral. Lacrosse people were everywhere, including some who played with Becker on the old Mount Washington Club team that was as star-studded as any MLL team today.
They recalled a Mountie practice one day when Becker took a shot that hit goalie Jimmy Kappler in the chest and drove him back into the goal. Kappler, a Hall of Famer and former Maryland All-American, was the best goalie in the country. That didn’t stop him from saying, “I’m not going back in the goal if Larry’s out there. I’ll work on clears, but I’m not getting back in the goal.” “Oh, sure, Larry was a big, strong guy,” Scott said. That was Larry Becker. Outstanding at everything he did.
— Bill Tanton
btanton@uslacrosse.org May 2016 » LACROSSE MAGAZINE 17
©JOHN STROHSACKER
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