Jim Becker, AP reporter who covered Jackie Robinson and an underdog Hawaii football team, dies at 98

HONOLULU (AP) — Jim Becker, a world-traveling journalist who covered Jackie Robinson’s big-league baseball debut and the U.S. Army’s retaking of Seoul during the Korean War, died Friday. He was 98.

He died of natural causes at a Honolulu hospital, said his goddaughter Carla Escoda Brooks.

Becker served as an Associated Press bureau chief in Manila, New Delhi and Honolulu and covered Margaret Thatcher as a freelance journalist in London. But he said his most important story was about an underdog Hawaii high school football team that won a league championship, a tale he told as a Honolulu Star-Bulletin columnist.

Becker joined the AP in 1946 fresh out of the Army when

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