Victor P. Becker was 53 when his pitching changed overnight. One moment he could throw like always. The next, his arm would not cooperate. He could not put the ball over for a strike.
That strange night on the mound turned into more than a setback. It led to a Parkinson’s diagnosis. After that came almost twenty years of learning how to live and adapt, day by day.
Now Becker shares what he learned in Punch Out Parkinson’s Disease: Do More Than Just Survive, Thrive!. He wants to help people who are newly diagnosed. He knows how much it can hurt when fear takes over. He also knows that a person needs more than lab terms and medical wording. He offers a different kind of help. It comes from someone who has faced the confusion and the frustration, dealt with the weird parts, and still kept going.
Victor P. Becker remembers the softball game in a way that still sticks. At first, nothing stood out. It was Tuesday night, not long before the playoffs. He did his usual warm-up and felt ready. Then, on the first batter, he walked him. That seemed odd, but it was not the end of the world. He settled down, finished the inning, and saw his team put up six runs.
When Becker came back to pitch again, it felt different right away. He walked four batters in a row.
“I knew something was wrong,” he said later. “I couldn’t land a strike.”
His teammates did not know what to think. Becker had a reputation as one of the better pitchers in the league. For him, sports was only part of the picture. He also carried fatherhood and a tough job. Before Parkinson’s disease arrived, he saw himself as a high-tech executive. His main focus was taking care of his family. He spent more than thirty years in human resources.
In that role, he learned a lot about people, disagreements, leadership, and shifts at work. Still, that did not fully prepare him for what was coming.
Later, a neurologist finally gave the problem a clear label. Parkinson’s disease.
Becker has talked about that moment as something that splits a life into two parts. “Before” and “after.” The doctor’s visit was short, only a few minutes. But what happened next kept unfolding for years.
Before Parkinson’s, a Life Built Around Family and Competition
Becker was the oldest kid in a household that later had nine children. He looks back on that time with warmth. At the same time, he learned early what big families demand. You show up, you work hard. You treat others like real people. You change your plans when life shifts.
Years later, he found those lessons came in handy in ways he did not expect.
Becker is also an identical twin. That stands out in relation to his Parkinson’s diagnosis because his twin brother does not have the disease. Becker does not turn that into some deep riddle. He sees it as this: the brothers share some biology, but they are still separate people. They live separate days. Still, Parkinson’s has pulled them into more regular contact. When they get together, Becker says his brother often brings him a coffee. It is a small act, but it hints at how an illness can quietly alter how people show up for each other.
Family also shaped him in harder moments. One event he calls especially important was seeing his daughter fight for her life. It started after she became critically ill from what began as a mosquito bite. For a while, it was frighteningly close to the worst outcome. That near loss changed how he understands fear. It also made him lean more on humor. During her recovery, they tried on purpose to get her to laugh.
Because of that, Becker later carried a similar mindset into his life with Parkinson’s. He believes taking things seriously matters, but humor can take some of the pressure out of fear.
“There is plenty of time to be serious,” he said. “I enjoy laughing.”
What Human Resources Taught Him About Change
Long before Becker started speaking up for people with Parkinson’s, he had already spent years working with another kind of shift.
In his early human resources work, he noticed a pattern. Many people feel tense about change. They also avoid hard conversations. Instead of speaking to the person who can actually help, employees would go to HR with complaints about supervisors, pay, coworkers, or day to day conditions.
Becker came to think that problems do not just fade away. They usually stay put. He described it in a vivid way, like issues checking in and lingering in the “bureaucracy hotel.”
As an HR leader, he focused on three ideas: dignity, honest talk, and solutions that help both sides. He believed some companies did not take HR seriously. Too often HR was seen as only the place for paperwork and benefits. Becker pushed for a wider view. He also held that top leaders set the feel of an organization, including the speed of decisions, the day to day mood, and the culture people live with.
After he retired, Becker turned what he had learned over decades into his first book, Everything You Know about Organizational Behavior You Learned in High School. The point of the book was meant to grab attention. A lot of the behaviors from the teen years do not disappear just because someone grows up. Competition, popularity games, bullying, the need to be noticed, group behavior, and wanting to fit in can come back once people get roles at work. They reappear in adult offices.
If Becker had to shrink the lesson of that book into a short line, he would likely pick this:
“TEAM TEAM TEAM.”
It might sound unrelated to Parkinson’s advocacy. Yet the connection is there. Both parts of his life return to the same question. What happens to people when things get uncomfortable. And how much can the right group change outcomes.
The Diagnosis That Changed the Rules
Becker was 53 when the diagnosis arrived. His first “problem” was not a quick loss of strength. It was his own mind spinning.
A Parkinson’s diagnosis can drag in a flood of scary thoughts. Becker recalls the urge to look things up. Soon there were pages of symptoms, one after another. The days ahead felt crowded with every possible bad turn.
At first he kept it quiet. He tried to avoid telling coworkers and the people who shared his athletic world. But secrecy takes work. Then the signs started to show. His voice got softer. His face moved differently. Keeping it hidden became harder, not easier.
Little by little, Becker learned a lesson that shaped what he would later do with this disease. He learned that adaptation is not the same as giving up.
Once, a pitcher could count on his body to act in a steady way. Now his body could shift the rules with no warning. Simple tasks started to take longer. Dressing could trip him up. Eating in front of other people meant extra attention. Even trips required checking how to handle medicine when time zones changed. Exercise still mattered, but it did not always look the same.
He kept testing options anyway. Golf. Yoga. Travel. Time with others. Some attempts did not work well. Hot yoga, for instance, turned into a chance for laughter instead of a win.
Over time his ideas fell into four points. Flexibility. Adaptability. Resilience. Relentlessness.
He does not frame this as a cure. Parkinson’s is a long term neurological illness. Becker’s book is based on his own lived experience. It is not meant to replace a doctor’s care. What he focuses on is control over the response. You cannot pick the diagnosis, but you can still choose how you meet it.
The Moment That Changed His Perspective
Soon after Becker learned he had Parkinson’s, he saw a disabled veteran trying to get her wheelchair through a doorway. She had lost both legs.
What stuck with him was more than the injury. It was how she carried herself.
She joked about what she was dealing with. She also said the chair was only temporary. In her view, she would walk again. After that, Becker looked at his own situation differently.
He began to think the letters “PD” could label something he had. But they should not act like the whole story for who he was.
Later, that idea became the emotional core of Punch Out Parkinson’s Disease: Do More Than Just Survive, Thrive!
Becker does not write like he is teaching from a clinical manual. He wanted a real back and forth, like talking with someone who has been through it. Someone who has already been in the ring, taken some hard hits, and can explain what the early rounds feel like.
The book covers morning routines, how to share the news, movement, meals, managing the timing change of taking medications on trips where the time zone changes, exercise, friendships, and support groups.
He also brings up small things that can matter a lot. For example, picking food that is easier to handle. Planning for extra time before going out. Figuring out how to move through an airport. Noticing when a task that once felt simple now needs a plan.
That is the point. Parkinson’s does not show up only in doctor visits. It shows up when you are buttoning a shirt, ordering dinner, getting on a flight, and deciding whether to dance.
Why Becker Wanted to Write the Book He Needed at 53
When someone is newly diagnosed, the flood of information can feel strange. There is plenty of medical writing, but the hardest questions are still the private ones. What will tomorrow be like? Who do I tell? Can I keep working? Will people treat me differently? Can I travel again? Can I still have fun and enjoy my life?
Becker’s book tries to sit right in that gap.
He uses a fight like metaphor to shape the chapters. Each part ends with “Vic’s Counterpunches.” Those sections are short and meant to help you think through steps you can try in your own days. The book is meant to be read fast. Becker seems to know that a person who is newly diagnosed may not want pages of technical detail. Sometimes what you really need is comfort and proof that the past has not vanished.
A lot of his guidance is plain. Keep moving. Find and lean on support. Use the right medical specialists. Plan for slower days. Stay grounded. Also, keep some humor in the mix.
One saying he likes a lot is “motion is the lotion.”
Still, the core idea is not that being upbeat makes Parkinson’s simple. Becker has lived with the condition long enough to know better. His message is that a long illness can call for steady changes. That does not mean you must give up every thing that brings meaning or joy.
From Private Diagnosis to Public Advocacy
Becker’s path has moved from quietly trying to hide his Parkinson’s diagnosis to helping others in the Parkinson’s community around Austin, Texas. He is now President Emeritus on the advisory board for the Capital Area Parkinson’s Society. In that role, he supports the same kind of network he urges newly diagnosed people to seek out.
This shift is important.
At one time, Becker kept his condition to himself and worried about who might find out. Now he talks about what day to day life actually looks like. He used to work as a human resources professional, helping teams handle tough people issues. He draws on similar skills, like listening and clear communication, and he adjusts as situations change. He also focuses on building teams, but now that work is aimed at a community that shares a neurological disease.
His two books may not be as far apart as the titles make them sound.
Everything You Know about Organizational Behavior You Learned in High School looks at how people handle hard relationships and repeating patterns.
Punch Out Parkinson’s Disease looks at how people face a painful kind of change they did not ask for.
In the end, both books come back to how people act when pressure builds.
Still Moving Forward
At 72, Becker will not call himself only a Parkinson’s survivor.
That label feels too quiet for the point he is trying to make.
What he wants is to keep growing inside the life he actually has. He still wants to be a father and a grandfather. He still thinks like an athlete. He writes, speaks up, and shows up, even with everything that has changed. He hopes science will one day deliver a cure. Still, he will not pause his living until that day arrives.
Almost twenty years after that odd Tuesday evening at the softball field, the matchup in front of him looks different.
Now he is not counting pitches.
He is working on adaptation.
Parkinson’s altered how he pitches. It altered his habits. It altered what used to come without thought, and what now demands focus. It also pulled him into talks he never planned to have. Over time, it led him toward a group he did not expect to join.
Yet the drive that pushed him onto the mound is still there.
If Becker sat with the 53-year-old man who just left the neurologist, he would likely say something close to what he puts on the page. Yes, the disease will reshape your days. You will have to adjust to a new way of living. Some tasks will take more time. Move forward anyway. Seek out people who get it. Keep laughing when you can.
Most of all, do not mistake a diagnosis for the last chapter.
Victor P. Becker is still competing.
He has just found a different way to do it.
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