Storm surge of memories

The need for safety forces you to slow down. The early preparations against Typhoon Ompong have caused precautionary preemption of work, sports and the general hustling routine we’re used to. Many are stranded in their homes, unable or afraid to travel. Some see it as a chance to binge watch their favorite downloaded shows and movies. Others mindlessly browse their favorite websites, vainly trying to amuse themselves, feeding themselves empty calories of memes, rumors, entertainment bulletins and fake news.

For this writer, it is a time of recollection, reorganization and gratitude. Writing and research take up some of the time. The rest is spent going through and arranging old photographs, a storm surge of memories.

Career-wise, I was not always a sports journalist. I cut my teeth in the years of ABS-CBN’s resurrection, under the hard news mentorship of the late Frank Evangelista and Angelo Castro, Jr. When you’re new, you work the night shift and have life-changing experiences like seeing your first dead body, first autopsy, first murder victim. The police beat exposes you to the things your parents protected you from, all in an unexpected barrage of the shocking and unsavory. It changes you in ways you wish it didn’t, and there’s no going back. You wish there was a way to protect your children from ever going through what you did.

After six months of jumping into filthy floodwaters, being in the middle of firefights and flying around in open helicopters and getting shot at, I realized this was not for everyone, and not for me. Way before it became fashionable, I jumped into sports with both feet, full-time. 

Back then, our older colleagues in the print media were not as welcoming, often looking at me and my crew sideways, as if we didn’t belong. Back in the late 1980’s, it was unheard of for a broadcast reporter to cover sports every day. It was the first time that sports news was aired every day on the early evening and late-night newscasts, something I am deeply proud of. The one concession I had to make was to cover other beats at the same time. But it had to be done to prove a point. Thankfully, the late Sim Sotto, then president of SCOOP, welcomed this writer and even created a regular Sports Broadcast News Agency of the Year Award in 1989. That, in turn, impelled other sports editors to grudgingly acknowledge that we were not going away any time soon.

In those days, nobody else on television was looking for sports stories. Turns out there were tons of stories which are now seen regularly on some TV newscasts. Darts, billiards, bowling and basketball were my regular diet. Once, my first cameraman, the late Rey Teodoro and I once drove to and from the Palarong Pambansa in Quezon roundtrip to make TV Patrol’s deadline. By my estimation, we averaged 100 kilometers a day on weekdays, 150 kilometers a day on weekends. With today’s traffic, you’d be hard-pressed to cover half that distance.

Soon, other breakthroughs followed. No network covered the 1989 SEA Games, but I had a crew on the ground there. We were the first to cover the Junior World Golf Championships and many other events, in the age before pagers, texting and the Internet. Nobody covered the NCAA basketball finals, believe it or not. NBA players like champion Lakers’ power forward AC Green came over. There were so many sports, and so little time every day to get as wide a spread as possible. Thankfully, we had the airtime on the evening newscasts and the morning show. 

In more than three decades, this storm surge of memories has included the Olympics, a dozen SEA Games, the NBA, PBA, MBA, UAAP, NCAA, PABL, PBL, SEABA, ABL and other basketball leagues, hundreds of world boxing title fights. We pioneered 3-on-3, saw it disappear, and saw it become an Olympic event. The list includes dozens of new sports in dozens of countries, new leagues, new personalities, new awards, new friends. Funny, the one thing missing is an Asian Games. 

In an ever-expanding horizon, we’ve produced sports documentaries, pioneered sports story-telling in corporate training, and seek new ways to honor our heroes. I am thankful for the years, and all who’ve made it possible. On to the next new adventure.