Halfway down the Danube

Balikbayan interlude 2, the mystery of Filipino sports

Let me be blunt. The national sport of the Philippines is basketball. And no one knows why.

1. There is no soccer in the Philippines.

Yes, that's right. In the Philippines, while there are soccer players, soccer has no national following of any kind. You might as well be kicking a dead panda's head around.

This British blogger is completely bewildered at the lack of soccer in the Philippines. Like most soccer bigots, he blames American influence. "Yes, those Americans have a lot to answer for!" Uh-huh. The idea that soccer is not a very interesting game to someone not brought up in the sport never crosses his mind.

2. In fact, there is no football, period.

But "Nomad" also neglects to point out that the Philippines has also rejected real football, the gridiron (although other Pacific islands have adopted it with almost religious zeal), and even that occasionally worthwhile Australian kind, perhaps due to Filipinos encountering too many Australian football players over the years. But perhaps not.

3. There is no baseball in the Philippines either.

Like other east Asian countries, like other Latin American island nations, the Philippines has also flirted with baseball. I myself don't understand the passion baseball can inspire. For me, it's only a pastime: pleasant, pastoral, a relaxing way to spend an afternoon with a beer. On the other hand, it can seduce the most unlikely people. For instance, here's British historian Simon Schama:

I’m helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love, the first time you go to bed with a woman. You never forget. It’s special. It’s the first time I saw a ballpark. I’d thought nothing would ever replace cricket.

(3a. Which lets you know where cricket stands in the scheme of things.)

And yet, after a promising start under the nearly benevolent American occupation of the Philippines (and even a continuation under the almost completely malevolent Japanese occupation), baseball simply petered out. It became in the Philippines something like soccer is in the U.S. -- a kid's game, a game you watch on international TV -- and even there, it's become tainted. (In 1992, Zamboanga City in Bangbang province beat Long Beach, California in the Little League world championship... except the manager of the team had brought in ringers from down the coast. Oh well!)

Joseph Reaves, in his award-winning Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia attempts an explanation. Part of it, he theorizes, was due to an aging postwar Filipino baseball player population:

In 1949, for example, the preeminent Filipino baseball writer of the time, Filemon V. Tutay [and isn't that a wonderful name? -- CY] wrote in the Philippines Free Press that large numbers of fans "stayed away from the ball parks because they have grown tired of seeing the same faces on the local diamond." By way of underscoring his point, Tutay wrote an article four months later that amounted to a roll call of the relative geriatrics then playing in the country's top baseball leagues "despite wobbly legs."

Reaves gives Tutay's roll call, and Tutay wasn't kidding. Some were pushing Filipino life expectancy of the time -- for instance, Hugo Ramos, Sr., age 54, starting left fielder. He needed to be identified as "Senior" because his son, Hugo Ramos, Jr., was playing on the same team. (Second base.) One wonders if there was a Hugo Ramos III waiting in the wings, and if so, at what position.

But Reaves is as bewildered as our footie friend by what the Filipinos turned to:

Baseball's recovery in the postwar Philippines was hampered by the amazing popularity of basketball. At first glance, the transfer of affections seems both improbable and illogical -- improbable, becase Filipinos of the mid-twentieth century tended to be comparatively small physically, and basketball is a game that penalizes physical limitations. Filipinos might be able to compete against Filipinos, but their prospects were severely limited in international competition.

The shift to basketball was illogical, too, because for most of the first half of the twentieth century Filipinos had shown an affinity and talent for baseball. They were, arguably, the dominant force -- at the very least, a highly competitive force -- in Asian baseball for much of that time.

Clearly, basketball and baseball are both readily identifiable as American games... any attempt to link baseball's waning popularity in the Philippines with some sort of anti-American backlash seems futile. Besides, baseball remained as popular as ever in Japan during the height of World War Two.

4. In Filipino basketball, it's not about how tall you are, but what you can do with the ball.

Here's P.J. O'Rourke, back when he was funny, about 1987 or so. The setting is Davao City, one of the Philippines' many garden spots:

Nick took me to a squatter patch called Agdau. It used to be known as "Nicaragdau," partly because the NPA [New People's Army, which is exactly what you think it is -- CY] ran it and partly because Filipinos love any bad pun. [true! -- CY] Agdau was built right in the water with splintered packing-crate catwalks from one stilt shanty to the next. The Davao River -- sewer, sink, and the garbage collection service combined -- flowed by underneath.

On one bit of dry land was Agdau's only solid structure, a tin roof covering a basketball half court. I was promptly beaten in a game of H-O-R-S-E. The tall kids in these precincts of malnutrition are four feet eleven inches but do lay-ups like Air Jordan. If the NBA ever raises hoops to twenty feet, the Chicago Bulls are going to have to take up field hockey.

As it turned out, the NBA didn't have to raise the hoops for the once-great Chicago Bulls to become lowly. But O'Rourke's point still stands.

5. Finally, there is no ice hockey in the Philippines.

Yet.

Posted by coyu at March 1, 2006 03:51 AM