First, a disclaimer: you should take this report with a grain of salt because it comes from Beth Celis of the Inquirer, and as much as I enjoy reading her columns, she’s not the most reliable of reporters. She writes today that former PBA enforcer Rudy Distrito is all set to fly back to the Philippines, if he hadn’t done so already.

(UPDATE: Former PBA cager Abe King confirmed via email that Distrito is indeed on the way back to the Philippines. King, who organizes the PBA Legends Tour in the US, has been helping Distrito out over the past few years.)

(SECOND UPDATE: GMANews.TV carried this photo of Distrito arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Wednesday morning, and ABS-CBN ran the story.)

The tale of the former Ginebra and Swift hotshot has taken a much sadder turn than most retired PBA players; in 2005, he was convicted of manslaughter after stabbing to death the boyfriend of his former live-in partner. Distrito was sentenced to a term of four to twelve years.

In 2007, Inquirer columnist Rina Jimenez-David published a letter from Distrito describing his prison experience. He detailed his first prison pickup basketball game, wherein his team left him on the bench because they didn’t think he could play. When he finally got the chance to get into the game in the fourth quarter, he ended up scoring 25 points to lead his squad to a come-from-behind victory, in the process earning the respect of everyone in the facility. The other inmates have taken to calling him O.G. for “Old Gangster” (although the acronym might have also stood for “Original Gangster,” like the Ice-T album). Meanwhile, prison guards went with the more familiar moniker “The Destroyer,” picking up the nickname from Filipino nurses who visited the place and were familiar with Distrito’s old job.

Distrito’s name is etched in PBA history forever after his championship-winning shot over Benjie Paras in the finals of the 1991 PBA First Conference. The shot completed a comeback for Ginebra after falling to a 1-3 deficit against Shell. That championship was also the last hurrah for the never-say-die Ginebra team of the late-‘80s/early ‘90s, just before the franchise became the perennial whipping boys of the league.