Marooned a lifetime ago

The late sportswriter Butch Maniego was there at ringside when the UP Maroons won their first post-war UAAP championship in 1986 at the former Ultra in Pasig, now Philsports arena, and during the raucous celebrations he approached me to say, “We never thought we’d see it in our lifetime.” That was the Maroon dream then, and in many ways still is: to win a title despite the odds stacked up against it.

People have been asking if I had watched live the Maroons fall to the De La Salle Green Archers in the recent showdown capping season 88 at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, and all I could say was “ran out of tickets, saw it on TV.”

The frustration was such that due to the inconsistent play of the so-called Maroon 5, or graduating players dating back to their time with coach Gold Monteverde at the NU Bullpups, some disgruntled fans were referring to them as the Moron 5, the local comedy franchise directed by Wenn Deramas about a similar number of nitwits who get themselves into one scrape after another.

Reports had it that scalpers were making a killing, tickets to the last chapter of the fabled Maroons vs Archers trilogy going at astronomical prices. More than 24,000 people jammed the old Cubao coliseum, as even SRO tickets were being sold for more than the recommended budget for Noche Buena, all for a chance to witness history.

Yet what history exactly was being made? Thirty-nine years ago at the Ultra, a mere press ID was enough to gain access to watch the UP vs UE championship, and let in too a brother visiting from Oakland as well as our respective wives. These days you have to be on a master list to enter site of a championship game. A lifetime saw the eventual diminution of the humble press ID, now best used when negotiating with a traffic enforcer hiding behind electric post or under bridge near a faulty stoplight.

Admittedly still something of a culture shock is the fact that the Maroons fought in the finals for five straight years, during the storied collegiate careers of Harold Alarcon, Gerry Abadiano, Terrence Fortea, Reyland Torres and Janjan Felicilda, wards of coach Gold from the junior title-winning Bullpups team that included Carl Tamayo, Kevin Quiambao and Steve Nash Enriquez.

As coach says, his players are proven winners, and two titles out of a possible five are not bad, already something of a mini dynasty, perhaps comparable to the Golden State Warriors’ run in the NBA from 2015-2019 when they won three out of five.

But can you imagine the battles to get to the final 4, let alone the finals? The guys deserve their flowers, not morons at all. The night of Game 3 was also the night of the UP lantern parade at Diliman campus, and though ideally it could have been capped by a bonfire, the Maroons’ presence at the parade felt just as warm. How would we put it to Butch, we never thought it would be repeated not once but twice in another lifetime?

On a related note, another Maroon wound up on the winning side when the Gilas women’s team took gold at the SEA Games in Bangkok, with Fil-French shooting guard Louna Ozar helping anchor the team along with Kacey dela Rosa, Angel Surada straight from the UAAP finals, second generation cager Sophia Dignadice and fellow teen Sarah Heyn.

Clearly, Philippine women’s teams were ascendant in the games, as the Filipinas football team also took gold despite a contentious call of offside against a Viet player in the first half. No VAR in Bangkok, however repeated viewings on YouTube revealed that it was a borderline case, meaning it could have gone either way. Breaks of the game finally decided by penalty shootout: the Vietnamese kick pass occurring at the exact same time the receiver broke through the defense, some say lunged.

Wonder what the late football player Edo Adriano of Dumaguete would have had to say about that, we never got a chance to talk about the beautiful game, marooned as we were in Manila most of the time, but he did write me a long letter once in longhand during one World Cup about England’s frustration and decades of futility. Raise a glass then to the beautiful game in the city of gentle people, whatever lifetime you had in mind.