Quinito Henson’s article last week about the UP Fighting Maroons profiled the management committee of the team: Chitong Rivera, Bert Mendoza, and Jake Castro. Calling them “distinguished,” Quinito argued that even though the Maroons finished winless, the three men would continue on fighting.

Continue reading "Meet the clowns behind UP’s 0-14 record"

Philippine basketball has started to develop a small but vibrant community on Twitter. The Sweetest Tweets is a round-up of the best messages, in 140 characters or less.

Continue reading "The Sweetest Tweets supersized, featuring Rod Nealy’s farewell, the Jones Cup, fashion advice from Chot Reyes, and much more"

Rafe Bartholomew’s seminal book about Philippine basketball came out in bookstores yesterday, and you should really get a copy if you’re any kind of fan of Philippine basketball. I got mine last night at Fully Booked in Rockwell, grabbing the last copy in the store; the lady at customer service said they had four copies in stock, all of which ended up sold. The books are supposed to be available at Fully Booked, Powerbooks, and National Bookstore outlets, but because they usually keep a low number of copies on stock, the availability is hit-or-miss. Or, you can grab a copy from Amazon.

Continue reading "Pacific Rims out everywhere now!"

I have been harping about this on Twitter for a while now, but I just wanted to put on record that I really can’t stand the play-by-play work of Paolo Trillo. It’s nothing personal. He just plainly sucks.

So what’s wrong with him?

Let me borrow a line from ‘Almost Famous’: To begin with… everything.

Continue reading "Paolo Trillo sucks: A look at the worst announcer in the PBA"

Haven’t done a bullet/links post in a while, so here we go:

• Rafe Bartholomew had a lengthy, two-part interview at In the Bullpen (part 1, part 2), which delves not just into basketball, but Philippine culture and history as well.


• Ronnie Nathanielsz gave his new favorite sports patron, Manny Pangilinan, a tongue bath (as Rick Reilly would say) in last Friday’s column to show his support for MVP’s plagiarism issue. I laughed out loud when, in an effort to praise the PLDT chair, Nathanielsz compares Pangilinan to… Ferdinand Marcos!

Continue reading "Monday afternoon bullets"

“Fire Quinito is a very, very impressive Philippine sports blog, and I'm not saying that only because the guy who runs it reads my stuff. The blog's take on Philippine sports is funny and right.”
-- Rafe Bartholomew, author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball

“Gutsy.”
-- Tim Cone, Alaska Aces coach

“Irreverent, objective, witty, straight to the point. Just as sports reportage should be. Yes, even when it attacks the 'numerous dick moves' of Chot Reyes.”
-- Chot Reyes, Talk N Text Tropang Texters Coach

“Fire Quinito reminds us that reading about sports should be as fun as watching or playing them.”
-- Howie Severino, GMANews.TV Editor-in-Chief

Continue reading "What people say about Fire Quinito"

Since the influx of emails from personalities such as Jamal Sampson, Rajko Toroman, and a comment from Chot Reyes these past few days, people have been emailing me left and right about messages for these people, including a lot of suggestions for Coach Toroman regarding team strategy and player recruitment. Apparently, I am now the official receptionist of all of Philippine basketball.

Continue reading "Ok, this takes the cake as my favorite email of the year"

Had a good chuckle when found this in my inbox a couple of days ago. I could understand the confusion on Twitter, but does it still confuse anyone who goes through this site and finds the email address?

Continue reading "My favorite email of the year so far"

Rafe Bartholomew quickly parlayed his star turn in Quinito Henson’s column into an interview with former PBA courtside reporter (and crush ng bayan) Jannelle So, who now hosts Kababayan LA, a talk show for Filipino-Americans in southern California.

Continue reading "Rafe Bartholomew talks Krypto-Nate with Jannelle So"

To follow-up my previous post about the Black Superman, here are a couple of YouTube videos about Billy Ray Bates in his days 1983 stint with the Crispa Redmanizers.

Manotoc even hints at Bates’ alcohol problem, which PBA teams over the course of the next few years were only too willing to ignore as long as Billy Ray put up the buckets.

Continue reading "Billy Ray Bates on video"