Ugly Americans

This week raised the hackles of some PBA insiders anew, as FedEx chairman Bert Lina made known his sentiments about fake Fil-Am players at Tuesday’s PSA Forum. This was hastily followed by a statement from the PBA Board, admonishing Lina for not keeping his statements all in the family.

Perhaps it is time to closely examine the cultural problems now besetting basketball, and how it has spilled over into mainstream society, or vice versa. Historically, this phenomenon is nothing new. The United States has used Korean Americans for its taekwondo teams, Japanese Americans for its judo teams, and Chinese Americans for a variety of sports. So why should we be different, since many of us aspire to be, as the pre-Commonwealth lexicon, "little brown Americans," don’t we?

But, far from treating this as an infestation (instead of an immigration), what have Fil-Ams wrought? There are many decent, law-abiding Fil-Ams legitimately playing basketball and other sports in the Philippines. Some, like Barangay Ginebra’s Eric Menk, have followed due process, at the cost of some of their prime playing years. Others have married Filipinas and have settled here, putting up businesses and putting down roots.

But they are merely a part of a larger picture which sees us having our identity eroded by interracial cross-pollination, and I don’t mean just bearing mestizo children. We seem to like everything American. A new survey of adolescents and teens apparently has shown that many of them dream of being a "VJ" when they grow up. Unfortunately, this does not truly apply to pro basketball.

Back in the PBA’s early days, you could dream of being a baller. Juan dela Cruz, with no other gifts than physical ability, could hone it to razor sharpness and become a national player, then make a living playing basketball. Not today. Fewer and fewer slots are available for homegrown players, with a new deluge expected to enter the draft next year. Certainly, teams want to win, but at what cost? The aspirational value of the PBA has been eaten away, and that isn’t the Fil-Am players’ fault, either. They are hired to play, so why shouldn’t they take the opportunity?

However, they are also transplanting some of their boorish habits. How many of these Fil-Ams do habitually spend their nights drinking, some before games, and - let’s face it - sleeping around?

One Fil-Am I know, who was getting on in years, felt like a rock star in the defunct MBA. In his team’s home town, they were treated like royalty, and he had his pick of some of the most beautifucl young women home and away. As the league folded, he was being courted by a championship-calibre team from the PBA. Before his last trip back to the US, he had gotten his college-age girlfriend pregnant. When she informed him of her condition, he shrugged his shoulders and said "Do you want to destroy your life for something like that?"

She had an abortion.

Another unemployed part-European Fil-foreigner visited a city in the south, and was attracted to a tall, long-haired Southern beauty. Initially taking precautions in their trysts, he soon disregarded any birth control whatsoever. The young woman is now pregnant, and the player doesn’t’ return her calls. In fact, he even asked for an in-vitro DNA test to prove the baby was his, claiming that this has happened to him before. The young lady, an only daughter, now has the hazardous and painful dilemma of figuring out how to tell her parents. The young satyr, meanwhile, continues to spray his seed all over the country.

Although not all Fil-Ams behave this way, many of them do. And how do we deal with this? Granted that this also happens to Filipinos, there is a misplaced conception that falling in love with or hooking a foreigner brings the promise of a better life. But remember this: if they are so talented, what are they doing here? Why aren’t they in the NBA or Europe?

These are just some of the questions we must answer. In many ways, we asked for it. There is increasing pressure for basketball teams to win, even at the college level, which has seen schools sending scouts for talent overseas. And women seem to gravitate towards whoever is new and - in their eyes - mysterious. If our voluminous mail on The Basketball Show is any indication, roughly seventy percent of requests we get are for Fil-Ams. The most letters we receive are for players like John Arigo and Mike Cortez of Alaska, Danny Seigle of San Miguel Beer, Mark Caguioa of Barangay Ginebra, Jimmy Alapag of Talk ‘N Text, Rich Alvarez of Ateneo de Manila, and others. And for some Filipino males, that reality is hard to accept.

How do we sift through all of this to find a means of filtering the cultural benefits and damage that imported players bring? One thing’s for sure, our landscape has changed, whether we like it or not.