I HAVE had a motley of partners in the radio coverage of Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) games from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s. We worked in tandems composed of an anchor and the color man.
The anchor does the play-by-play, blow-by-blow if you will, of the game. He describes every action without ever missing a beat to make the radio listener feel like he is watching the contest live.
The color man brings in the atmosphere inside the coliseum and analyzes every move and distinct playing pattern of the protagonists, explaining how a layup was scored or why a three had to be drained, or what a particular rebound or steal would/could become the turning point of a match. Humbly, that was me for two decades or so.
I sported a moustache when I started that job in 1988 or thereabouts, when the PBA held its games regularly at the old Ultra (now the PhilSports Arena) in Pasig City.
Among my partners were dudes surnamed Sakdalan, Dimalibot, Liboro, Reyes and Santiago. The others were Jimmy Javier (yes, the lawyer-brother of Apo legend Danny Javier) and the living legend himself, Sev Sarmenta. Those who have gone back to our Creator were Butch Maniego and Boyet Sison (Boyet’s late Dad, Adi, was the PBA’s first public relations officer).
Then, of course, there was Ed Picson, with whom I have had the rare opportunity of being his longest-serving analyst in a PBA radio-coverage partnership lasting more than a decade or so. So long was our working relationship that Ed and I would eventually treat each other as more than brothers.
We had spent nights drinking beer lasting up to dawn—starting right after a radio coverage most of the time. Although not an Ilocano, Pareng Ed loved goat meat that much that he’d sometimes invite me over to his house to partake of kilawen, adobo and papaitan prepared by a friend of his steeped in goat meat delicacies.
Not known to many, Pareng Ed was multi-dimensional, being the national boxing president when boxing won three of the four medals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
When Ed and Carina had their first-born who they named Bamba, I was one of only two godfathers—the other being former PBA Commissioner Noli Eala. I was then putting to bed the Inquirer’s sports section when Ed called me up.
“Pare, come over quick, please,” said Ed. “We are baptizing our baby and you are a ninong.”
How could I refuse?
I rushed over—even as the baptism would begin at the unholy hour of 4 p.m. at the Sto. Domingo church in QC.
Pareng Jake P. Ayson and I were at Pareng Ed’s inurnment the other day at Aeternitas along Commonwealth Avenue, QC.
“It happened so fast and it hurts,” said Carina, Pareng Ed’s beloved. “He was diagnosed (liver cancer) only last March. Before that, he felt no pain at all.”
In the nineties, when Pareng Ed had finished his first sports column for the Manila Bulletin, he called me to his home.
“Please go through it,” he said. “Do anything you want with it.”
I did nothing to his thing of beauty, embellishing it with his signature ending to all his succeeding columns: “See you around.”
Enjoy your journey, Pareng Ed. And, yes, see you around.
THAT’S IT Condolences, too, to the loved ones of Ate Coring Laurel of Lumban, Laguna, and Elai Radovan of MTRCB. Ate Coring, Kuya Nick’s love of his life, and Elai had passed on to a life without pain and hurts.