Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball - - Rafe Bartholomew
Hoops dreams in the Philippines-a fresh and unforgettable basketball diary of one man's journey and one nation's passion.
Welcome to the Philippines, where the men are 5'4," the everyman's Air Jordans are a pair of flip-flops, and the rhythm of life is punctuated by the bouncing of a basketball...
Allured by the idea of an island nation full of people who love the game as irrationally as he does, American journalist Rafe Bartholomew arrived in Manila to unlock the riddle of basketball's grip on the Philippines. On his unforgettable journey, Bartholomew spends a season inside the locker room of a Philippine professional team, dines with politicians who exploit hoops for electoral success, travels with a troupe of midgets and transsexuals who play exhibition games at rural fiestas, and even acts in a local soap opera. Sweating his way through hard-fought games of 3-on-3, played with homemade hoops for 50-cent wagers, Bartholomew uses a mix of journalistic knowhow and the hard- court ethics he learned from his dad to get in the paint and behind the scenes of Filipinos' against-all-odds devotion to the sport. (1)
Pacific Rims is a journey into the world of Philippine basketball. From street corner games played by flip-flop-clad teenagers, where the losers buy RC Cola and plastic sachets of “Happy” Peanuts for the winners, to the country’s professional league, the Philippine Basketball Association, no people in the world love the game like Filipinos. I spent three years following the Philippine game, studying its roots, recording the stories of its former and current greats, and sweating my way through daily pick-up battles. The nation’s passion was sometimes irrational, often impressive and always inspiring. (2)
At least one of the “beermen” is Billy Ray Bates, whose pro basketball career in the Philippines provides one of the more entertaining “whatever happened to him?” stories you’re likely to encounter. Bates played for four years in the NBA, but he peaked in 1983, employed by the Crispa Redmanizers in Manila. For the next several years, according to Rafe Bartholomew, Bates, who had “all-star talent and all-world athleticism,” was “a tank with wings . . . the closest most Filipinos ever came to seeing Michael Jordan or Julius Erving in person.”
Bartholomew’s tales of US players who were not quite good enough to stay in the NBA but found celebrity, notoriety or both in the Philippine pro ranks are sometimes cautionary and always entertaining, as are the tales of his own stint as an actor in a local TV soap opera, where he played the white guy. The author also explores the roots of the popularity of hoops in a country where “basketball is part of the evanescent core.” To accumulate evidence for that contention, Bartholomew spent time not only in the thriving pro league, but with “a troupe of midgets and transsexuals who play exhibition games at rural fiestas.” (3)
Source:
(1) = Amazon.com
(2) = Fil-Am Ako
(3) = Boston Globe