I enjoyed this delightfully kooky Christmas video from the PBA:

Continue reading "Merry Christmas everyone!"

Rafe Bartholomew is finally back to writing about basketball (maybe because Glee is on hiatus) with a post on Free Darko about the legendary Crispa Redmanizers. If you’ve been reading his blog, you might remember his story about finding an album full of Crispa pictures at a tiangge in Tiendesitas. For the new post, he consulted with the eminent message board historian of the PBA, Jay P. Mercado, to give context to the photos.

While we’re at it, you might want to check out Rey Joble’s piece on GMANews.TV a few weeks back about the Redmanizers’ 1980 All-Filipino conference run, when they almost ended the conference undefeated. They dropped one game, to rival Toyota, en route to winning the championship.

Filipinos are naturally short, which is why we should forget our unrequited love for the tall man’s game of basketball, and instead focus our resources of football, where we can be more competitive internationally. It’s a common refrain that has grown louder with the recent success of the Philippine national football team in the ongoing Asean Football Federation Suzuki Cup. Traditionally the doormats of the competition, the Azkals’ 2-0 victory over defending champion Vietnam has galvanized the Filipino sports fan base with dreams of more international football glory.

On its face, the argument for football over basketball seems sound. It’s easy to imagine the graceful Pinoy athlete gliding through the pitch to dominate the beautiful game. Watching tiny Pinoy hoopsters soaring above the rim over foreign 7-footers, however, is much harder to fathom.

The numbers, however, tell a different story.

Continue reading "Why we need to love football"

This AV Club article by Noel Murray about why sports announcing is generally terrible hits so many nails right in the head that I’ve decided to devote a whole post to it. Well, if you’re a sports nut who cares about this stuff, I highly suggest heading over there to read the whole piece, as well as most of the comments, which have some real gems as well.

But here are a couple of points that I wanted to discuss from the article:

Continue reading "Why does most sports broadcasting suck?"

Hehe, who would have ever thought “Kris Aquino” and “Lou Gatumbato” would appear in the same headline? Only on Fire Quinito! Also, a reminder for everyone that the Philippines vs. Burma game tonight will be broadcast on ESPN at 8:30 PM.

Anyway, here are some interesting reads to get you through humpday:

Continue reading "Wednesday bullets starring the Azkals, Kris Aquino’s leading man, and Lou Gatumbato"

I traveled to Thailand a couple of times this year along with my colleagues from the day job to conduct training seminars for expatriate Burmese journalists working for Mizzima News. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least, and even though the training schedule was packed, there was time to shoot the breeze a little with the Burmese journos. In fact, I was even able to ask them about how they felt about the last Rambo film, which was set in Burma and filmed in Thailand. Apparently, the pirated DVD of the movie was a huge hit among the Burmese, and the guys I talked to were even proud to share that they knew fellow Burmese exiles who scored gigs as extras in the Stallone film.

Continue reading "Philippines versus Burma"