Champions

February 20, 2010

If only to do my patriotic duty, let me extend my congratulations to
Manny Pacquiao for his smashing victory over the Mexican boxer, David
Diaz, earning for himself his fourth world boxing title.

He has done his country and countrymen proud. In these trying times,
buffeted as we are by natural and man-made disasters on a weekly
basis, and starved as we are for heroes in the flesh, Manny Pacquiao
is a real boost to our sagging national ego.

Actually, I do not like boxing. I did not watch his fight in Las
Vegas. I do not enjoy watching anyone, not even a Mexican boxer, being
beaten to a bloody pulp by another person, even for “sport.”

The first and last boxing match I have ever watched in my entire life
was the title match between Floyd Patterson and Archie Moore – did I
get the names right? – in Chicago half a century ago.

My housemate Jimmy, who is a real boxing aficionado and who now lives
in Australia, convinced the rest of us in our Evanston rooming house
to take the El to Chicago for the fight.

I do not recall any memorable incident that evening, except that I
predicted out loud that the fight would end at 9:30. Sure enough, at
9:30, someone – it must have been Moore – got knocked down or out. I
should have been a boxing bookie.

During the weekend of the Pacquiao-Diaz fight, I was watching replays
of the Euro 2008 UEFA football (soccer to Americans) quarterfinals,
semi-finals and finals in Basel and Vienna.

I had signed up with SkyCable for live broadcasts, but later changed
my mind when I found out that all or most of the live coverage started
at 2:45 in the morning. Never having worked as a call center agent or
as a night watchman, I didn’t think I could stay awake from 2:45 to
5:30 a.m. everyday for several days. So I had to settle for replays
from Solar Sports through Paranaque Cable, to which one of our TV sets
is fortuitously wired.

Of course, watching football replays with full knowledge of who had
won and who had lost, and by how many points, robs one of the
edge-of-your seat suspense and excitement inherent in a well-contested
game.

But there was still the sheer joy of watching well-executed plays and
expert ball-handling by some of the best football players in the
world. This would be almost akin to watching, again and again,
world-class gymnastics – my favorite spectator sport – performed by
champions and would-be champions in previous years.

Anyone who has watched national teams compete in such championships as
the UEFA and the World Cup know the explosions of national pride that
accompany each victory, as the league progressed. Euro 2008 was no
exception..

Sports champions become national icons. And well they should be,
because they personify the self-esteem their victories generate in the
national psyches. Excellence in sports is actually a tool in
nation-building. Which is why the governments in the then socialist
countries (the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Cuba) all invested
heavily in developing world-class athletes

I am surprised that with the world-wide acknowledgement of Manny
Pacquiao, there is no attempt by the Arroyo government to enlist his
endorsement of a nationwide search for new, younger talents through
the medium of nationwide competitions for different age brackets .

Much as I dislike boxing as a sport, I know that it is very popular,
especially among the low income sectors.

And not just in boxing. I am surprised that with several world class
champions that we have in billiards, there is no attempt by the
government to search and develop new and younger talents in this sport
through nationwide competitions for different age brackets.

Even more than boxing, billiards is very popular, especially among the
low income sectors. There are literally thousands of billiard halls
all over the country. An organized competition nationwide, if properly
promoted and marketed, would discover dozens of potential world-class
champions who would help build national pride, as well as earn good
money for their families.

Why stop with boxing and billiards? This country has not produced
world-class tennis players since Felicisimo Ampon in the 1950s. Why
not organize nationwide competitions among ball boys (‘pulot boys’)
and nameless pros who earn their living in the country clubs of the
filthy rich?

So also would nationwide competitions among the caddies in the golf
clubs of the filthy rich. We have not produced a world-class golfer
since the time of Celestino Tugot in the 1960s.

With our low self-esteem because of decades of poor governance by the
trapos and their political dynasties, we need more champions in sports
to remind ourselves that we are as good as anybody else in the world.

Sports are the best training ground for excellence because they teach
the virtues of hard work, self-discipline and fair play. Unlike the
vices of instant yaman, social anarchy and pervasive dishonesty which
our trapo culture has embedded in our national psyche through decades
of misrule. . *****

All reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org
and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

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