Kyle Beckerman broke the MLS record for all-time appearances by a field player in October, passing Steve Ralston for the all-time mark when the Real Salt Lake captain played his 379th career regular season match on Oct. 17 against FC Dallas.
We’re not sure if Beckerman has cornered the Major League Soccer market for best stories, too, but the 16-year Major League Soccer veteran certainly has his fair share. Sadly, not all of them made the cut for our Beckerman long form, but some of the stories surrounding Beckerman were just too good not to share. Here are a few of the funniest, most illustrative and most heartfelt extras, as shared by current and former teammates, coaches and friends.
Jason Kreis – RSL head coach, 2007-2013
“I guess I’ll tell a funny one. We were getting ready to go down and play in Dallas or Houston, I can’t remember which one, but it was the beginning of a week and it was in the summer already, so it was quite hot in Salt Lake. But we had talked a while about why we hadn’t been able to get a win in Dallas or Houston, and he showed up a training literally wearing trash bags underneath his uniform. They were underneath his shorts and he put sweats on top of it all, I think in an effort to try to disguise what he was doing. He came out and decided that he wanted to train that day in trash bags to simulate the heat and humidity that we were going to face in Texas.
“At some point we had to tell him to take the trash bags off because it wasn’t healthy.”
Midfielder Ned Grabavoy – RSL teammate, 2009-2014
“I remember a game during one of my first few seasons with RSL, I think we were playing at Chivas, and he went down. We’ve all gone down a million times, usually he limps up and walks around and a couple minutes later, he’s good. But I remember he went down and he didn’t get up right away and then he got up and he went back down again I think, and he went off the field, subbed out of the game. I thought to myself, something obviously not good had just happened because I’ve never seen him sub out of a game like that before. I remember the next couple days talking to him, being like, ‘What do the doctors think?’ And he told me that he had talked with multiple people and they suggested that they have surgery on a tendon in his foot or ankle, which would basically end his season and I think at this point we were just seven or eight games in. And I remember him saying something just like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to do it, I think I’m just going to kind of let it rest for a little bit and see how it feels.’
“I remember it must’ve been like five or six games, five weeks or so, and he just didn’t really do much and he just came back and he was just 100 percent. I just remember thinking to myself how strange it was. But for a guy like that, having the surgery and missing most of the season or him being hurt or unable to play was just not in his thought process. Like he didn’t even understand probably what the doctors had said to him, what that meant, because to him it was just doctors, right? It was so weird to me. We played like five or six games, he came back to training and said, ‘Alright, I’m ready to go now,’ and he played the rest of the season.”
New York City FC defender Chris Wingert – Colorado Rapids teammate, 2006-2007; RSL teammate, 2007-2014
“It’s a few significant moments for me. I can remember as soon as we finished the [first leg of the CCL final at Monterrey in 2011], everyone was pretty pumped. We tied 2-2, we felt like we did our job, Javier [Morales] scored such an amazing goal at the end, so we were all in good spirits and Kyle was just devastated next to me on the bus. And I didn't really realize why and then it hit me pretty quick that he was [suspended for the second leg]. Something like that that wouldn't be my favorite moment, but it's a significant one.
“An off the field moment that sticks out for me was we were living together in 2009 when he met Kate, [now his wife]. He was coming home from an appearance and I can remember sitting upstairs watching TV, early evening, like kind of just in passing was like, 'Oh, how was the appearance?' And he was like, 'Good.' I kind of turned around – I don’t know, he said it with a little bit of something behind it – and I turned around and he said, ‘I might’ve met my wife tonight.’ You have some friends they would say that a million times, ‘Oh, I met the one,’ you know? But Kyle was definitely not that guy and I never heard him say anything like that, and for somebody that he didn't even really speak to – they might’ve said a word or two to each other that day – but for him to say that, it's just a really cool moment that I always remember since him and Kate ended up getting married.”
Real Salt Lake goalkeeper Nick Rimando – Miami Fusion teammate, 2000-2001; RSL teammate, 2007-present
“I think there's actually one that really comes to mind is when he got the nod to play [for the US national team] against Mexico in Mexico [in a 2012 friendly] and we had never beaten them there. I remember being on the bench and seeing his jersey just soaked, just dripping out of every place just to try to get through this game. And to try to get that first win in Mexico, at the Azteca, I just remember after that game the whistle blew and just coming up to him and hugging him and just being so proud of him [the US won 1-0]. He's worked so hard to wear that jersey, to represent this country and to play in one of the biggest games, against Mexico in Mexico and get a win, it was a special moment. I was just so happy for him. It kind of defined him as a player and as a friend. To know what he did to get there, what he accomplished, kind of defined who Kyle is as a player and as a person.”
Colorado Rapids head coach Pablo Mastroeni – Miami Fusion teammate, 2000-2001; Colorado Rapids teammate, 2002-2007
“One moment that sticks out in particular for me, I think it’s more of, and I get goosebumps thinking about it, is seeing him on TV at the World Cup with a US jersey on. I mean there's so many little moments where he's saying, ‘These fools don't know who I am, these fools don’t know what I’m going to do,’ and he's been saying that since he was seven years old. ‘They don't understand that I'm going to make it, they don't get it.’ So I don't think it's just one moment, but for me as a friend to be as close to him and see him work extremely hard and grind when no one else believed in him and then to see him on the TV set during the national anthem representing the United States, for me, was just one of those moments I'll never forget.”
Landon Donovan – US Under-17 residency program teammate, 1998-1999; USMNT teammate
“Kyle, Michael Bradley and DaMarcus Beasley, right after that whole debacle with the national team, he came over – and you have to remember this was Kyle’s moment, just a minute earlier he had made the World Cup team – and amidst all his happiness, he came over and put his arm around me and talked to me and consoled me, and I will never, ever forget that.”
Portland Timbers defender Nat Borchers – Real Salt Lake teammate, 2008-2014
“Before MLS Cup, when we won MLS Cup in ’09, we had a team meeting before that game. And everybody was nervous, pretty much for everybody maybe other than Nick [Rimando] it was their first championship game, and we had this team meeting. Kyle stood up and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re going to win this game, and when we do it's going to feel fantastic.’ And I just remember that feeling, it just gave you this confidence, this belief like, ‘We're going to win.’ You have a leader saying we're going to win, believing in us and the sincerity with which he said it stood out to me and I'll never forget it.”
Real Salt Lake midfielder Javier Morales – RSL teammate, 2007-present
“I have a lot of memories with Kyle, but one of my favorite ones was after we won the Cup in Seattle. We were in the bus and going back to the hotel. And the year before we were in Argentina in preseason and we went to a game for Rosario Central, and the fans were singing a song so Kyle and me, we tried to figure it out how we can sing that song for Real Salt Lake, you know? And I remember Santi [Morales’ son, then a toddler], Kyle, me, you know jumping on the seat singing that song, that’s one that I remember and smile.”
Real Salt Lake founder Dave Checketts – RSL owner, 2005-2013
“There was this moment in Seattle when we were going into MLS Cup. The night before the final we went out to a restaurant and it was just the team. It wasn’t spouses, it wasn’t anybody outside our little circle of players, coaches and staff. I’m sure Garth [Lagerwey] was there, Jason was there and he asked me to speak to the team. I spoke about the fact that when you get this close, when you get all the way to the final game, there will come a moment in the final game – I don’t know when it will be – but there will come a moment in the final game where you will all be given a chance, our team will be given a chance to grab the game and win it, win the championship.
“And I described how it felt to work and work and work with the [New York] Knicks and build a championship team, get all the way to the NBA Finals, all the way to game seven, all the way to game seven and lose. I said I concluded then that that hurts worse than never getting there at all. And so I said, ‘When this moment comes, when we’re given an opportunity to seize the day, grab the game. I want you to reach out literally and grab it and win it.’ We’re this close, we’re here, we might as well win it. And I just remember looking at everyone’s face and you know we had some great competitors in that room – Nat Borchers, Chris Wingert, Javier Morales – we just had some great competitors in there, but it was Kyle who literally came up out of his seat as I said, ’Grab it and win it.’ He came up out of his seat and started clapping. And then everyone stood and clapped and that’s when I knew we were going to win. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know it would go all the way to a shootout, but I knew in that moment we were going to win. And he started it, he started it all there.”
