Pacific Rims

by Rafe Bartholomew

  Yes, the thought of myself as anyone’s idol was absurd. I should mention that these people didn’t mean “idol” in a religious sense; instead, they were using the word as a greeting, kind of like saying, “Dude! I’m a fan.” True, the thought of me having fans was only slightly less ridiculous than the one of me inspiring worshipers, but whenever somebody called us “Idol!” we couldn’t help but play along. The next morning they’d tell their buddies about sharing a slimy cup of cheap rum with the Cockers imports, and that was an honor for us players. But with the first game against Javas looming, I also got the feeling from the Boracay regulars that they expected our winning streak to end. After anointing me and Jonats as their idols, they would usually mention that it was too bad we had to play Javas next. “Sayang!” they’d say. What a waste.

  It felt like Boracay’s entire adult population showed up to watch the Cockers challenge Javas. When I arrived at the court on the back of a teammate’s motorcycle, the lawn surrounding the pavement was so dense with onlookers that I had to tiptoe through the tangle of splayed limbs to reach our bench. The standing crowd backed up all the way across the plaza to the church steps overlooking the court. Kids sat on top of a fence that separated the blacktop from the road; tricycle drivers lined their rigs up bumper-to-bumper along the curb and climbed on top of the sidecars to watch from homemade upper decks. Across the street, a guy wearing a faded jersey from a past tournament waved at me. “Bartoleme! Kayang-kaya mo! You can do it!”

  Both teams were undefeated, and while the stakes weren’t particularly high for that game—we were on target to meet again two days later in a win-or-go-home semifinal match—both sides seemed eager to prove themselves. We jumped on Javas from the opening tip-off. Jonats came out firing. He sent looping three-pointers splashing through the net from spots all around the arc, like someone playing around-the-world in an empty gym. I rebounded Javas misses and rifled passes to Jonats at midcourt, where he blew by defenders for layups and trips to the foul line. He passed to me on the right baseline; I turned and saw nothing but empty space between myself and the basket. As I approached the hoop, Munro rushed in and chest-bumped me. I absorbed the blow, jumped straight up and banked a one-hander off the backboard. On Jonats’s rare misses, I rebounded and scored. Our success energized our local teammates, who made shots, came up with steals, and slipped under the basket for layups when defenders double- and triple-teamed me or Jonats.

  Midway through the first half the Cockers had built a seventeen point lead. Javas, stunned, called time out. Then things changed. Jonats was whistled for three phantom fouls in rapid succession and had to leave the game for the remainder of the half. Every out-of-bounds call went in favor of Javas. The referees were whistling Cocker locals for traveling violations before they’d taken a step. The crowd, which had been reveling in the apparent demise of Javas, was hushed. Then the whispers began.

  “Luto, pare. Luto talaga.” The game is cooked. They’re being cooked. Luto is the Tagalog root for all words related to cooking. If a contest or contract is fixed, they call it cooked. In provincial tournaments, games were always slightly fixed, especially when you ran up a double-digit lead against the tournament organizer’s team. Munro was responsible for hiring referees, announcers, and scorekeepers, and he had even sold discount uniforms to the teams, all so the people of Boracay could enjoy playing in and watching the tournament. For all his generosity, it just seemed natural that the calls might favor Munro’s team. Even in these small-time tournaments, basketball seemed to reflect larger themes of Philippine society. In this case, it was patronage, political or otherwise, which persisted throughout the country and was especially strong in the countryside. Munro was treating Boracay to a lovely basketball exhibition; didn’t he deserve a reward for his hard work? Didn’t he deserve to win?

  As the game went on, the depth of the Javas roster also began to show itself. Munro could play. He stood a shade under six feet tall, with a built upper body and elbows like daggers. He was a consistent shooter, but what made him dangerous—as a player and as someone likely to injure you—was his frenzied approach to the game. On offense, he didn’t drive around his defender as much as barrel through him like a threatened rhinoceros. He was similarly berserk on defense, where he liked to crowd his man chest-to-chest and swipe at the ball in a blunt, chopping motion. And, of course, the referees rarely penalized him for his kamikaze style. Javas also fielded the tournament’s most decorated import, Rommel Daep, a former guard for Purefoods. Their other import was six-three with a lights-out jumper from the free throw line, and their big man, a good-natured, heavyset six-four local, learned to throw his weight around in the Philippines’ top semipro league. Even their less decorated players could all make open threes and handle the ball.

  On the other hand, the supporting cast playing with me and Jonats could have been the Pinoy Bad News Bears. After us imports, the best player was Trinidad, who was a legitimate threat from the three-point line, but his slight frame allowed Javas’ grown men to overpower him. Besides Trinidad, our other teammates were more memorable as oddities—a guy with a giant potbelly, one with an Elvis Presley pompadour, another with a cleft palate—than as basketball players. If we were going to beat Javas, me and Jonats would have to carry the team, and after the referees sidelined Jonats, that weight shifted onto me.

  My Cockers got rattled during the Javas comeback. Now, when I rebounded the ball and threw long outlet passes, instead of driving to the hoop, my teammates would freeze and wait helplessly while Munro, practically foaming at the mouth, closed in to snatch the ball from them. Daep, the heady professional, settled down the Javas offense. He directed the shooting big man to the high post and sent the six-four heavyweight under the basket. Playing in the middle of a zone, I could only guard one of them, and Daep was clever enough to always pass the ball to the player I wasn’t defending. By halftime the Cockers lead had shrunk to four points.

  Early in the second half Jonats attempted to protect his dribble by blocking one of Munro’s chops with his forearm. The ref whistled Jonats for a fourth foul. He was one call away from fouling out, or “graduating” as many Filipinos call it, so he returned to the bench to save himself for the last eight minutes. I went back to playing almost one-on-five, with my local teammates drained of poise and ready to succumb to Javas and their referee henchmen. Before long I reached an elevated state of pissed-off exasperation. I didn’t care who paid for what; I wanted a fair game.43 When the referees allowed a Javas big man to camp in the lane for about ten seconds past the three-second limit, then shove me out of the way to secure an offensive rebound and score, I hawked a loud, exaggerated loogie and spat at the ground near an official’s feet. I was engaging the refs in icy stare-downs during dead balls and celebrating made baskets by cursing loudly in English. This behavior was definitely not what the State Department envisioned when they granted my Fulbright scholarship (the program’s implied goal is to improve the country’s image by sending clean-cut young Americans abroad), but my violent remonstrations seemed to endear me to the Filipino crowd more than anything else I did on the court. Spectators started hooting with delight at my approaching meltdown. After one call, a referee answered my death glare with an apologetic shrug and raised his eyebrows as if to say, “It’s nothing personal.”

  My outbursts might have helped the Cockers stay close. I found a new ferocity in my inside game, bumping and jostling my way to offensive rebounds, tip-ins, and trips to the foul line. The cleft palate guy got hot, and I penetrated into the lane and kicked out passes to him for three-pointers that kept the Javas lead to five or six points. We still had a chance when Jonats returned, but by then he’d sat for so long that his shooting touch went cold. The long jumpers he’d made early in the game stopped falling. Meanwhile, Daep took control of Javas’ offense and immediately returned to the high-low game. When the high post big man made a jumper to extend Javas lead to seven points with ninety seconds to play, I knew we would lose. The Javas
empire was shaken, but in the end it prevailed.

  On the morning of our rematch I woke at seven to squeeze in some shooting practice. My legs felt rubbery from playing five games in four days, but my touch felt good. I worked around the court from baseline to baseline, making ten jumpers in each spot. Catch-and-shoot five times, then off-the-dribble five times. I kept it up until I’d made a few hundred. I wanted to step on the court that night feeling like I could singlehandedly beat Javas. If the game turned out like the last one, I might have to. After one mid-range jumper, somebody hissed at me. A tricycle driver, resting in the shade of his sidecar, was watching from the street. “Bartoleme! Pssss! Don’t do that! Don’t make that shot. You lose tonight. I bet one thousand on Javas.” A thousand pesos was only slightly more than twenty dollars, but it was probably several days’ worth of earnings for the driver.

  Our semifinal game against Javas followed the same script. We built an early lead off hot shooting and Jonats’s superior talent. The refs turned on us and fueled a Javas comeback. The rest of the way it was nip-and-tuck basketball, with the lead changing practically every time either team scored. This time, however, the refs were saddling me with dubious fouls. A few minutes before halftime they whistled me on three straight possessions. First, I set a pick for Jonats just above the foul line. Munro didn’t see it and slammed into me. We were both shaken by the collision, but the foul was called on me. The next play, I was guarding a Javas big man in the post and was whistled for pushing him with my knee. Less than a minute later, I picked up another knee-in-the-back violation. I hadn’t committed any fouls, but suddenly I was in foul trouble.

  Midway through the third quarter Munro stripped one of our locals and came charging through the lane. I stood with my hands straight up as he barged through and swung an elbow that split open the bottom of my chin. With my blood spilling onto the blacktop, the referee blew his whistle, pointed at me, and puffed his chest out to make the sign for a blocking foul.

  “What’d I do? Foul his elbow with my face?” I wiped the blood off my chin and shoved a red palm in the ref’s face. “How did this happen?”

  Not only was I one call away from fouling out, but I had to run across the street to have my wound treated at the medical clinic. The dim, yellow-lit room was empty except for an examination table and a scale. The doctor was snoozing on a cot in the back room. When I woke her she told me I needed stitches. I asked her to just bandage my chin so I could return to the game. I’d come back later to be sewn up. She pressed gauze under my jaw and wrapped three strips of medical tape lengthwise around my head. I had a full-skull chinstrap.

  I crossed the street and subbed myself in for the beginning of the fourth quarter. The small lead we were holding when I left had swung in favor of Javas. My first time downcourt, Jonats missed a jumper, I snagged the rebound and scored while being fouled. It was a momentum-turning play, and we followed it with a defensive stop and another basket to tie the game. Someone—a referee perhaps?—had to swing the game back in Javas’ favor. With three minutes left, just after we reclaimed the lead, I was called for another kneeing foul, my fifth. I graduated. I still don’t understand what I did wrong, but I was so incensed that I tore off my blood-stained chinstrap, threw it to the ground and stomped on it, then pulled my shorts down and waddled away in my boxers while the crowd hooted its approval and chanted “Bartoleme.”

  Filipino basketball crowds love a good tantrum. In my histrionic moment, I had channeled Jaworski and other celebrated hotheads of PBA past and present. There was something about watching a man crumble in the face of flagrant crookedness that drove people wild. Not only was it great spectacle, but people could relate to it. For many Filipinos, it was the story of their lives. If the odds were stacked against you, you might as well fail with some chutzpah and let everyone know that—to paraphrase Mang Tom—your balls are down where they belong. Of course, the Cockers lost. But our two battles with Javas wore them down, and they hardly put up a fight against Bong’s other team in the finals.44

  The postchampionship revelry over Javas’ downfall was a whole-island affair. Bong bought two spit-roasted pigs to celebrate and served one at a private team party and another at center court for the crowd. At the party, a disco cover band serenaded the imports with Bee Gees tunes and we stood for an ovation from Tirol’s family and friends. Even though the Cockers lost, I was cheered all over the island by fans who enjoyed my pantless antics. Everyone I talked to asked me to reenact the moment where I pulled my shorts down and stormed off the court.

  We were up all night, eating and drinking, swimming in the moonlight and soaking up adoration we probably didn’t deserve. The next morning, we flew back to Manila. In the capital, no one would confuse me with an import. But in Boracay, the Bartoleme legend endured. When Ravi returned to the island six months later, he was greeted by familiar calls of “Idol!” and people asking about his friend Bartoleme, the fiery, half-naked import.

  The Boracay tournament had raucous crowds, small-time malfeasance, and overblown local rivalries—all ingredients in the beloved, combustible jambalaya of Philippine grassroots basketball—but something was still missing. When people told me about these tournaments, they usually spoke with reverie for the raw emotion that games inspired in entire communities. I hadn’t felt that in Boracay; instead, the freewheeling, high-scoring games and somewhat nonsensical cajoling from amateur coaches reminded me of New York youth tournaments I played in as a teenager. More than a year later, when I watched the finals of a similar league in my own neighborhood in Quezon City, I realized there hadn’t been anything missing in Boracay, but that there was no way to fully appreciate these tournaments without being a true local.

  In Loyola Heights, where I had been living for three years, I was as close to “local” as any gargantuan foreigner could hope to be, and I could recognize the links between the games and the teeming mass of families, local politicians, and drifters in the crowd. The league had been ongoing for months, but I hadn’t paid much attention aside from occasionally watching a quarter when I passed the court on my way to dinner. Then, on a blustery Sunday afternoon, while I was lugging a sack of sweaty clothes to the laundromat, I heard the hi-hat patter of rubber flip-flops slapping the concrete behind me, followed by the familiar call of “Kuya Raphael! Kuya Raphael!” As the street children closed in on me, I fumbled in my pocket for enough change to treat them to hopia pastries and RC Cola. For once, however, snacks weren’t on their mind.

  “Kuya! Are you watching the game tonight?” one kid asked in Tagalog, and I replied that I hadn’t heard about it.

  “Championship na! Lots of people are going.” It was settled. I would come to the court around eight.

  Later on, when I set out to walk to the game, the streets were deserted. Rain poured down in buckets and turned entire streets into shallow puddles; everyone, including the tricycle drivers and the telltale buzz-saw din of their motorcycle engines, seemed to have stayed home. The wind shredded my umbrella and I was tempted to turn back and skip the game, but I soldiered on, half wondering if I’d arrive at an empty court. When I arrived, however, I saw that the weather wasn’t the only reason the streets were empty. There, under the court’s overhead lamps, I saw the whole neighborhood on the court and packed into its concrete bleachers. It felt like walking into a demented version of This Is Your Life, with three years’ worth of faces and memories hugging the sidelines. There were dozens of kids—Jeff Boy, Angelica, Ronnie, Jennylynn—who scaled me like a human jungle gym, stroked my exotic forearm hair, and asked questions ranging from “How many siblings do you have?” and “Where does your family live?” to “How did you learn to speak Tagalog?” and “Why are you so white?” These were some of the same children who watched me practice on this very court when I first arrived in the Philippines, and now I saw them gathered with their entire families. I bumped into Jay-Arr (because J.R. was so passé), the neighborhood MJ, an older teenager who had played me in some epic one-on-one duels. I
man-hugged the tricycle drivers who turned me from a Tagalog student into a Tagalog speaker during dozens of drinking sessions, where they passed around a cup of Red Horse beer, fed me fried fish balls, goat, and dog meat,45 and tried to teach me to curse like a local. One of them had made me an honorary godfather to his granddaughter. I saw the elderly twins who roamed the neighborhood selling “dirty” ice cream, cold scoops served out of a pushcart and stuffed inside pandesal bread rolls. I smiled and yelled “Red Horse!” when I saw the night watchman from a nearby construction site, because that’s what we did—for no apparent reason—every time we saw each other. I had never seen these disparate characters gathered together in one setting, yet here they all were at a basketball game.

  Throughout the tourney, each squatter community in Loyola Heights fielded a team. The private subdivisions where the area’s wealthier residents lived, including the one where I stayed, hosted their own leagues and didn’t participate in the public one. The local congressman, Mat Defensor, had sponsored the tournament, and the navy blue and gold reversible uniforms had LOYOLA HEIGHTS printed on the front and a University of Michigan-style M over one knee that actually stood for “Mat.” The teams from Ronas Garden and Daan Tubo had reached the championship, and I knew most of the Ronas players, since my town house was on the opposite side of Diliman Creek from their improvised village of plywood and corrugated metal. The game itself was a sloppy mess. Most of the players were quick and agile, and a couple could really shoot, but aside from a few pretty drives, they spent an awful lot of time losing the ball, then scrambling to pick it up, then losing it again. This kind of bewitched game, where everyone handled the ball like they were wearing butter-soaked oven mitts, was common enough to have a Tagalog name—larong buko—which compares such slapstick basketball to hoops played with a coconut.