It’s always a treat when Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, perhaps my all-time favorite Filipino writer, delves into sports. He doesn’t do it often, seeing as, with the state of our country, he really needs to be writing about other things, but when he does it, the results are almost always excellent, like the two articles he wrote about pound-for-pound champion Manny Pacquiao over the last couple of weeks.

The first one was about Pacquiao’s otherworldly confidence, as he notes that the Pac-man was just “as fearless facing his interviewer as he was facing Ricky Hatton.” He then wonders if Pacquiao’s extraordinary success is something borne of his extraordinary confidence, something that is frowned upon in our country’s culture:

Pacquiao has sometimes been seen, at least locally, as being too self-assured to the point of cockiness, but I don’t know that that is necessarily bad. Certainly, I don’t know that he doesn’t need it. You can’t get far without those levels of self-assurance, or cockiness, particularly when facing foes in the ring who look like executioners. Wrestling of course has driven the idea to satirical or self-parodying levels. But you need to feel bigger, better, larger-than-life to not be intimidated.

I’ve often wondered if that is not Pacquiao’s biggest strength. Of course he is vastly talented; self-assurance alone will get you nowhere. But I’ve also seen deeply talented athletes fall by the wayside. Many Filipino boxers lose while fighting abroad because they are not just fighting one enemy but several enemies. Quite apart from their foes, they are fighting a hostile crowd, an alien culture (including an alien language), themselves. Or their shyness, their sense of inferiority, the reflex of “knowing their place” that has been drummed into them their whole lives.

Not Pacquiao. From the first, he exuded pugnacity not just inside the ring but outside of it. Though his answers were humble, his demeanor was not. He was unfazed by the crowd, he was unfazed by the cameras, he was unfazed by his English. They were merely of the order of facing another foe, not unlike the one in the ring, and vanquishing them.

Today’s column, meanwhile, discusses Pacquiao’s turn on the cover of Time Magazine. While he is proud of the honor bestowed on his countryman, de Quiros also rues the implications of the achievement and how miserable the country has become:

The reason this country worships Pacquiao the way humankind’s ancestors worshipped the sun is out of sheer need. The reason this country grinds to a halt every time Pacquiao fights is out of sheer hope. Having nothing to be proud of, having indeed everything to be ashamed of, we look up to Pacquiao’s fights as something to prop us up, as a source of replenishment. His victories aren’t just our victories, they are our very survival. Man does not live by bread alone, he lives by circuses too. Lacking the one, we make do with the other.

Truly, heaven forbid Pacquiao loses.

I am proud of Pacquiao being on the Time cover. But I am also bothered by the thought that it represents a decline in the national stature, driven home by the fact that not too long ago a Filipino did so as well for a far more epic achievement. That was Corazon Aquino who made it there twice for having fashioned stouter wings than Icarus in the form of People Power. It’s not just that boxing is a lesser achievement compared to the liberation of a country. Tiger Woods will never be Martin Luther King. It’s also that Cory’s achievement enriches the people rather than pauperizes them by contrast.

It all fits in with the ongoing theme in my past posts, about how awesome it would be if there were better writers writing about sports in the country. I sincerely hope that our country turns it around, and not least because writers like de Quiros would then have more time to write about sports.

In the US, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam made his name covering the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, among other more serious topics. But later in his career, he devoted a lot of his time on sports, and his work in the field is considered some of the best sports journalism ever written. His seminal 1981 book The Breaks of the Game, about the Bill Walton’s Portland Trailblazers, was so influential that Bill Simmons still name-checks former Blazer Billy Ray Bates (the PBA’s Black Superman) in his columns, just because of the richness of Halberstam’s profile on Bates. Halberstam’s column about Allen Iverson from the 2001 NBA Finals still remains one of my favorite pieces ever.

In an interview with the LAist to promote his latest book, a 700-page tome about basketball, Bill Simmons shares some words of wisdom about writing in the digital age:

It seems that (bloggers) spend more time thinking about what their place is in the whole landscape than just writing. Whatever. Everybody’s been a struggling writer at some point. Everybody’s trying to break through. This isn’t a civil rights movement. Just write good stuff and people will find you. I don’t think there’s some magic elixir or some magic secret.

I started my site in 1997 and it was a little different because there wasn’t this same linking back and forth and all that stuff. I was on my own just like everybody else.

If you’re good, people are going to find you. You can twist it around every way you can and say ‘What does this mean? Where’s this going? Is this a movement?’ But it comes down to ‘Are you a good writer? Do you have good information? Do your readers trust you? Do you have an interesting spin on things that people haven’t seen? Are you funny?’ That’s the stuff that’s going to get you read. I don’t think that’s changed. That was the same case in 1980 as it is in 2009.

Beyond that, I think if you’re a young writer you want to be a young writer in 2009. I said this in the Huffington Post, in 1994 I might have been the best young sports columnist ever or maybe not, I don’t know. But I never had the chance to learn what the answer was to that question. Now I would have the chance to find out because I’d be able to start my own site and I would have been able to throw myself into all the things that I wanted to do.

Instead of constantly wondering ‘What are we? What’s our identity?’ just go out and kick ass.

I completely agree with his main point: the best way to get an audience is to be good. I do, however, think there’s still a place for flag-waving for sports blogs as they find their way in the media landscape. Simmons himself did a lot of flag-waving in his earlier days, carrying with him a chip over not getting a shot at newspapers, and we’re all the better for it; he blazed trails for a lot of bloggers and gave legitimacy to online publications, given that he’s just about the most popular sportswriter in the world.

Simmons’ second great point, about how much easier it is to find an audience in this day and age, fuels the reason why bloggers ought to keep waving their flag: so that voices that need to be heard in these conversations are actually heard.

Just take the NBA blogosphere for example; everyone knows about True Hoop and BDL, but how about all those other great blogs like Free Darko, Basketbawful, X’s and O’s, Clipperblog and Wizznutzz? Those blogs have vastly different voices, but each one is excellent. I’m a romantic at heart, so I see that blogosphere as a tapestry that represents and celebrates the richness of the NBA’s culture.

The truth is, I’m jealous for Philippine sports, because if we learned anything from Manila Vanilla, our sporting culture is just as rich and as interesting as any other’s. And yet we have to read the same old crap from our sportswriters with their cookie-cutter features and their mediocre reporting.

Think about a Philippine sports icon like Robert Jaworski, at once the most loved and most hated basketball player of all time, a physical marvel who played significant minutes until he was 50. Think about how precious little good material has ever been produced about Jaworski other than the usual platitudes (from the fans) or the usual hit pieces (from the haters), despite the richness of the subject. Did you know that he was already pretty old (29) when the PBA started, and yet went on to play 23 seasons? Or that he was banned from the MICAA for punching a referee? Or that, in the season he won the MVP, he almost averaged a triple-double? Or that when he was coaching Ginebra, there were a lot of unsavory rumors about how he handled the finances for his players?

Think about Manny Pacquiao, who is the greatest athlete this country has ever produced. When was the last time you read anything original from a local writer about Pac-Man? It’s always either something about his hard work and dedication, or about how carefree he lives his life. The only interesting material about him only comes from foreign sources, like the HBO 24/7 episodes.

It’s really a shame. But hey, we’ve got the perfect opportunity in the new digital landscape. This is why the name of this blog isn’t really a demand, but rather, a rallying cry.

I’ll just harp on this again because I find it so hilarious. A couple of sportswriters, Musong Castillo of the Inquirer and Arman Carandang of the Daily Tribune, wrote stories whining about their NBA Asian challenge experience, and how they were treated “shabbily” by the organizers, because they were allocated upper box seats instead of courtside. Castillo’s report was brief, because it was the type of report that didn’t really deserve any space, while Carandang’s report was longer because, well, the Tribune rarely has anything worthwhile to publish anyway.

I love how the articles drip of bitterness, and I am enjoying it because of their inflated sense of entitlement. Also, their stories read like they copied each other’s homework. Also see Nelson Beltran’s report in the Philippine Star focusing on the bad job the organizers did rather than the actual game, although he stopped short of writing about his shabby treatment.

But what’s clear here is that these sports writers are determined to write overwhelmingly negative stories about an event that, from most accounts, was an enjoyable experience for the fans, for the simple reason that they weren’t given nicer seats. This was their own little power trip.

When you consider the fact that ours is a country that alarms the international community because journalists in the provinces always face the threat of murder, supposed “journalists” getting miffed over not getting nicer seats to a basketball game seems really silly, no? Especially from people who are privileged enough to write about basketball for a living.

Former Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan (you guys might have heard of him) was apparently a pretty good basketball player, and this morning he was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Good on him.

With that, let me share with you my favorite MJ commercial. We barely see Black Cat in it, but it only serves to underscore just how deeply ingrained the Air Jordan iconography is in our collective psyche.

Was I the only person in the country who wasn’t excited about last night’s game between old NBA players and old PBA players? I thought it was the basketball equivalent of watching Air Supply’s upcoming concert at the Araneta Coliseum. Sure, we all love singing Air Supply during drunken videoke sessions, but why would anyone drop a thousand pesos for an upper box ticket? I love watching Dominique Wilkins on NBA TV, but I willing to pay good money to see a pudgy Nique drag his fat ass up and down the floor.

Also, as nostalgia games go, it could not possibly be better than the Crispa-Toyota game from a few years back. Nothing tops a senile Baby Dalupan not recognizing his players from the bench, or game MVP Terry Saldana giving a creepy post-game speech honoring the leader of his cult, Ruben Ecleo, who was in jail for alleged parricide.

Besides, I get enough sloppy, badly-played basketball just by watching the UAAP.

One thing I did find interesting were grumblings from local sportswriters, as tweeted by Fidel Mangonon and Rey Joble, about the move by the promoters to move the press box to upper box.

I can’t say I sympathize with the local sports media. Joble’s excellent work aside, most of our sports media, to be diplomatic, have gotten too comfy and do too little quality reporting; most of them are barely adequate. Worse, they’ve taken on the role of being influence peddlers for things such as annual awards.

But this trend of taking away premium arena real estate from sports media is a trend that’s happening worldwide. My opinion on the matter echoes that of Bill Simmons:

What's the point of having reporters or columnists sit courtside when 97 percent of them don't use that access for their stories? Most of the savvier teams (the Lakers, Celtics, Cavs and others) already came to that realization and moved press sections to the corners or balconies. With very rare exceptions, that phenomenal access rarely translates to the following things: Overheard conversations on the court; overheard strategies in the team huddle; funny tidbits from the game that I couldn't get from watching on TV; or anything else of that ilk. Given the ridiculous demands of newspaper deadlines, writers often spend the entire second half working on their stories. Check press row in the last few minutes of a game. No one is watching the game. WHY ARE YOU THERE THEN? Jason Quick (The Oregonian) and Brian Windhorst (Cleveland Plain Dealer) are two examples of thoughtful beat writers who use their access as a strength -- not just plum courtside seating, but locker room access for overheard conversations, mood reads or even armchair psychology -- and really, that's why I have both of them bookmarked. Bloggers might have advantages in the immediacy and candidness departments. But there are too few Quicks and Windhorsts and too many Everyone Elses. That's reason No. 485 why newspapers are struggling so badly right now; their writers squandered unbelievable access to sporting events to the degree that readers gravitated toward the opinions of columnists and bloggers writing from their living rooms.

In the same column, Cleveland beat writer Brian Windhorst responded:

You are not totally wrong, Bill. In general, newspapers and media members are guilty of getting too comfortable with their lot while the world was changing. We certainly know in Cleveland -- to help pay for Dan Gilbert's $90 million payroll, the beat writers have the worst media seats in the NBA, up in the second deck. Do I miss staring at Paul Silas' backside for an entire game -- for which we nicknamed him "The Garage" -- and getting LeBron's powder all over my computer? Or the time when Jerome James threw a ball at me in Seattle, clocking me in the side of the head and drawing a technical (the Cavs missed the free throw)? Actually, no.

But certainly the fans lose some connection. I cannot quantify it, but the readers who could never afford to sit that close (like almost all of them) get a little disconnected. I can't write about overhearing coversations about the players' off-court exploits, or at least I couldn't write about it for long. But I can describe nuances in the game for many. Your criticism of newspapers is well founded, but their link to the fans is still vital and if you don't believe me, ask Mark Cuban.