He is on the bleeding edge of Packers faithful

We laugh at sports fans who treat their teams like a life-and-death proposition.

We don’t laugh at Jim Becker.

Becker might not be alive today to cheer on his beloved Green Bay Packers if he did not bleed for them. Literally.

On Sunday, he’ll be in front of the TV to watch them take on the Atlanta Falcons. He is 80 now, has 11 children, 25 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. He and Pat, his wife of 58 years, play golf together once a week, when weather permits.

But when one of Becker’s sons-in-law entered him in a contest that annually chooses one Packers fan for inclusion in the team’s Hall of Fame, the life of this Wisconsin native was about to change.

Except few could have imagined the story behind Jim Becker.

He has been a Packers fan since 1941, when his father took him to an exhibition game in nearby Kenosha.

“It was two weeks before Pearl Harbor,” Becker says. “It was against the Coopers Cardinals, a semi-pro team. We won, 65-2.”

The we, of course, are the Packers.

Becker married Pat in 1952, the same year he made a second long-term decision. He would save up and buy a season ticket to Packers games. Money was scarce but he was determined.

Fortunately for Becker, the Packers used to play two games a year at Milwaukee County Stadium and allowed fans to purchase a two-game, season-ticket package. The Packers eventually moved all their home games to Green Bay, but that two-game package stayed. So did Becker.

It was still expensive, but he found a way.

He sold his blood.

Sometimes as often as six or seven times a year, he would give blood. He got $10 per donation back then, and it went toward that season ticket.

By 1959, he was ready. Coincidentally, so were the Packers.

“I bought my first season ticket the year Vince Lombardi came,” Becker says. “Pretty good timing, huh?”

And so it went, for 16 years, Becker supplementing his Packers ticket purchases with money saved from giving blood. The family grew, money got tighter, but Becker kept giving blood and buying Packers tickets.

He keeps a computer file now with all the games he has attended, plus the final score and a few highlights of each. In the time he has been buying tickets, the Packers have played about 600 games and Becker has been at 210 of them, each admission supplemented by a blood donation.

“I’ve only missed seeing maybe a dozen games over the years,” he says. “My wife scheduled a couple of baptisms, and what can you do?”

Then, in 1975, he went for a physical after his employer, the garbage disposal firm InSinkErator, encouraged it for all its middle managers. Becker says he only went because it was free.

In the physical, his blood tested as having a high content of iron. The doctor asked about his family history and Becker had a document that listed his father’s cause of death as hemochromatosis, which is a potentially lethal level of iron in the blood.

“My father died at age 43, when I was in Korea,” Becker says. “It was Sept. 22, 1950. I was 20, and in the Army signal corps. We were in the Battle of Inchon and moving so fast they couldn’t find me, and so I didn’t know for 10 days after it happened. I got a letter from my mother.”

Carl Becker was a Racine County sheriff’s officer who had served in Okinawa during World War II. On Sept. 22, 1950, he was at home in Racine and said he didn’t feel well, thought he had a toothache. He was admitted to the hospital, and died there. The cause of death was listed as a diabetic coma, but a nun at the hospital insisted that there was enough doubt to justify an autopsy, and persuaded Becker’s mother to do so.

That’s why, when Jim Becker handed over the document of his family medical history that day in 1975, the doctor saw hemochromatosis as the father’s cause of death and immediately ordered more tests.

“If that hadn’t been there,” Becker says, “I’m sure he would not have continued the conversation, and the same thing would have happened to me that happened to my father.”

Several days later, Becker and his wife, a nurse, were called to a specialist’s office in Milwaukee and told that he had the same blood disease as his father. They heard that life expectancy for someone going untreated with hemochromatosis, which can eventually shut down the liver, is about age 45.

Becker was 45. The diagnosis was made 25 years to the day his father died.

Becker’s levels of iron were very high. Doctors said the only treatment was to give blood, to get iron out of the system. They put him on a program of blood donations two to three times a month for three months and then expressed amazement when he told them he had been giving blood for more than 23 years.

“They said, without that, I’d probably be dead,” Becker says. “Being a Packer fan saved my life.”

Becker’s condition stabilized. At first, he was monitored every two months. Now it is twice a year.

The blood donations do not put recipients in danger. One dose of his iron is not harmful. Even so, for awhile after his diagnosis, his blood donations were termed therapeutic and not made available to others. But now, he says his blood is often given to women who need more iron.

Becker says none of his children are in danger. He says his wife was tested and had no trace of hemochromatosis. Doctors also told him that he has two positive chromosomes, his wife has two negatives, and that meant each child would have one of each and is safe from the disease. His grandchildren may be at risk, but he says none has reached the age where testing is crucial.

Becker’s story immediately made him a favorite to win the fan voting and get his spot in the Packers Hall of Fame.

In March the invited finalists sat in the front row at a ceremony in Green Bay, and the announcement was made that Becker indeed had become the 13th fan inductee.

“I kind of knew I was going to win,” Becker says. “The Packer people kept calling to make sure I was coming.”

Since then, he has had a bit more than his 15 minutes of fame. TV reporters come and watch games with him. Local newspapers have run stories. He even got a blurb in Sports Illustrated.

“It said, ‘Packer fan bleeds green and gold,’ ” Becker says. “They didn’t mention my name, but that was me.”

There have been photo shoots for magazines.

“One time, when they came,” Becker says, “my wife had to run out to the store to buy a Packers jersey. She wore it for the shoot, but left the sales tag on. As soon as they left, she took it back to the store and got her money back. She wouldn’t like it that I’m telling you that.”

His dedication to the Packers has never waned.

“My grandkids will tell you,” Becker says, “that when I’m watching a Packer game, they’d better do a belly crawl in front of the TV set.”

His opinion of Packers lore counts more now, and is frequently solicited. People ask him about quarterback Bret Favre and he tells them, “Favre is one of the best athletes to ever play the game, but he just got too big for himself.”

Becker’s picture is in the Packers Hall of Fame now, but he laughs when people comment on how special that must feel.

“I was in there already. There’s a picture of the Ice Bowl Game and I’m in it,” he says of the 1967 NFL title game. “I was sitting right on the goal line when Bart Starr sneaked across.

“It was so cold that, after the game, a friend and I got a sideline bench, dragged it onto the field, and sat there and drank some brandy to warm up while we watched people tear down the goalposts.”

That was 43 years ago. When it comes to his Packers, they’re in his blood forever.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com