40 years later

The new year marks the start of this writer’s 40th year as a broadcaster and journalist. Wow, four decades is a lifetime, but in my case, it has been several. Our batch graduated a month after EDSA. Since then, we have seen the world go by, or in this particular case, sat in the front row, as history was being made. We’ve been around for so long, we have to qualify our jokes with “please explain to people below 40,” just in case they don’t get the references.

Imagine a world without mobile phones, the internet, or even elevated trains and flyovers. People read newspapers and watched bulky television sets. You had to go to a library to do any kind of research, or photocopy an entire book when needed. Any foreign sports like the NBA, Major League Baseball, and the NFL were only available if you had an antenna that could receive Far East Network from Clark Airbase. Other than that, you had to directly call up people or have them fax you information that you needed. Such challenging times. How did we manage?

Local basketball at the time resembled mixed martial arts. As Abe King told The STAR long ago, you had basketball, boxing and wrestling in one. Oh, and there was this new kid named Michael Jordan tearing up the NBA. After decades of dominance, the Philippines could no longer keep up an international basketball competition. The best players were now earning a spectacular income of a few thousand pesos a month in the PBA.

I was a new reporter for ABS-CBN, which did not have a sports department at the time. As usual, rookies did the night shift and covered crime and military action. Truth be told, I got shot at a couple of times, and flew around in helicopters with faulty seat belts and doors that would not close. Bad combination. Any sports news I wanted to collect had to coincide with my regular beat or done on my own time. I decided to start what would later become ABS-CBN Sports. A few years later, I joined The STAR.

So much has happened since then: I weighed 50 pounds less. I was married, divorced, raised two men, had a daughter 20 years later, and had a home burn down. I found work wherever I could, and it took me to many strange fields. I learned to direct, write, do research, buy and sell things, give up others, but never surrender my passion for sports. It has been a blessing and a stress relief to have been able to play basketball, swim, and try other sports.

There have also been several firsts in the last 40 years. We covered the 1989 SEA Games because no one else did. I instituted the first multi-camera slow-motion replay set-up for the PBA and did the first postgame highlights in 1991. Many other firsts followed: Knockout, the first stepladder pro boxing tournament; the first nationwide 3X3 basketball event; the first world arnis championship; the first muay Thai documentary; the first international documentary on Philippine basketball; the first one on the PBA; The Basketball Show, Girls Got Game, Hardball and now, Basketball Universe PHL and Secret Sports Stories online.

Many friends and colleagues have come and gone, most notably Joe Cantada, Romy Kintanar, Butch Maniego and Ronnie Nathanielsz, among others. I also had my own experience with death in 2024, and spent 38 days in hospital for a heart procedure. I can no longer play contact sports, lift weights, or be overly stressed. Most painfully, I can no longer donate blood, which I did from 1990 to 2023.

Since 1986, more than 20 new sports have entered the mainstream, from various new combat sports like bare-knuckle boxing and lethwei (Burmese boxing) to dancesport and sports for the disabled and seniors. Technology has overridden society, to an alarming degree. But it has increased consumption of sport to unprecedented levels. There is still so much to do.

Here’s to the next 40 years.