Remembering Smokin' Joe

It’s the season for tribute, as the Philippine Sportswriters Association honors the greatest Filipino athletes of the day, in a lustrous ceremony worthy of its stature. You’ll read all about it and see the photos in the next couple of days. For this writer, though, the occasion brings back memories of one unforgettable friend whom I never would have had the honor of knowing if not for a life in sport.

This month, Joe Cantada would have turned 69, and it has been 19 years since his death. He passed away due to lung cancer on March 2, 1992, a week after he turned 50. He was larger than life, and that made him indelible. Even his birth was heralded by the bombs that signaled the start of World War II. But it was his little gestures that made him unforgettable.

I had heard all the stories. Joe had been Junior Mr. Philippines, and as a teen-ager, he broke a 19-year old national weightlifting record without even knowing it. He was Ateneo’s boxing champion when they still had the sport in the NCAA; when they still used the word “fisticuffs.” When Joe graduated from San Beda high school, he was saddled with so many medals, his barong actually ripped apart. Maybe that’s where he picked up the habit of wearing his shirts open almost to the navel, with a huge pendant bouncing on his massive chest. At work, Joe had such a forceful personality, his large hands regularly destroyed typewriter keyboards. At the formidable DZHP, Joe’s booming baritone stood out. In a span of six years, DZHP won the equivalent of today’s Catholic Mass Media Awards five times. They even covered the Tour of Luzon live.

Lope “Papa” Sarreal, Flash Elorde’s father-in-law, once told me proudly of the Thrilla in Manila, where Joe was ring announcer. Americans turned to him, impressed with Joe’s diction, asking if he was a Filipino. Papa would beam back at them, “Yes, Joe Cantada is a full-blooded Filipino!”

After 20 fruitful years of radio, Joe had a new challenge, facing the television cameras for the PBA. He was a man’s man, but also a fan’s fan. In one of those grand PBA opening ceremonies at the ULTRA he was always chosen hands-down to emcee, Joe flung his neatly pomaded head back to look up at the cheap seats, pointed his massive index finger firmly in the air, and bellowed “Kayo! Kayo ang PBA!” It was classic Joe.

I was a young producer then, and I immensely enjoyed his bottomless wit, his hearty chuckle, his effortless confidence. And he was always generous with advice. Our first Vintage Christmas party together, Joe wrapped his huge right arm around my shoulder so he could draw near, and rumbled a whisper in my ear.

“My friend, please accept my little advice,” he smiled. “But you look like a fly couldn’t land on you.”

Mockingly envious that our courtside reporter, the clownish Romy Kintanar, got to kiss all the beauty queens and starlets, Joe called him a “pregnant battleship”. His verbal fencing with Alaska team manager Joaqui Trillo, a La Sallite (they weren’t called Lasallians yet), was immortal. Joe also never kept his affections to himself. He would come to the games, whether he was working or not, and kiss you on the cheek  again, on camera, when it was your birthday.

Celebrating my birthday in January  during the PBA’s off-season  I thought I was off the hook. Boy, was I wrong. Joe cornered me and shouted triumphantly “You thought you could get away from me, huh!” And he planted a big sloppy kiss on me. It was probably the proudest moment of my career.

Classically trained, Joe peppered his play-by-play with Latin. He called the basketball a “spheroid”, for crying out loud. But he firmly knew his station in life, and was fiercely proud of it. One time, a CNN camera crew was on the sidelines, purportedly doing a story on ageless Bobby Jaworski. Andy Jao turned to Joe and told him that they had colleagues in attendance. Joe protested.

“That is just a field crew. We are commentators. They are not our colleagues.”

And he was also so much more. An accomplished singer and recording artist, movie actor who more than held his own against established action stars like Erap Estrada. And he was also a well-liked commercial endorser. But Joe was also intensely private. You couldn’t call him directly. You called his secretary, and he would call you back. He lived life on his own terms, with the sheer force of his personality.

Sadly, Joe’s appetite for life is also what consumed him. I could never stay in the broadcast booth when he was on the air, much as I wanted to. Joe would light up even though it was forbidden, giving everyone a license to do the same. Living the equivalent of three lives, he also smoked and drank. One April, after the last known replay of a PBA game, where a referee blew a game-deciding call between Purefoods and Shell, Joe felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He drove himself to Makati Medical Center. They told him he had lung cancer. We didn’t see him for seven months, only reading the press release, where Joe proclaimed, “There is only room for one Big C in this body, and that’s me!”

How we wanted to believe it.

One day, we got an urgent phone call. Joe was in his suite at Makati Med, and we could see him. To a man, we rushed over. He looked drawn, wearing a hat to cover the dry baldness caused by radiation treatment.

He still had the patented sideburns and mustache, though. But his voice was raspy, like someone had run a Stradivarius over gravel. It broke my heart.

He died soon after.