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Monday, August 15, 2005
Rama: Over donuts
By Karlon N. Rama
Stage five
I SHALL borrow the words of fellow writer Paul J. Taneo, a friend and tag-team partner for many years (those bottles o’ beer and, lately, heaps of tapsilog, never had a fighting chance), in the hopes that somewhere the middle, down before this article ends, I shall find my own voice.
“As inbred as the local sportswriting fraternity cum sorority is,” Paul wrote in his column last Friday, “and as basically benign the relationship we have with our sources, it is expected that gripes are kept not spread.”
It was a lament written genteel; though it hit me as a biting yet true commentary on the condition of journalism in the field of sports right now.
The stimulus that triggered Paul’s comment was the observation raised by Sun.Star Cebu’s veteran sports pundit, lawyer Manuel N. Oyson Jr., on how Manila and Cebu media covered the slugfest between Z “The Dream” Gorres and his Thai opponent, Deeden Kengkarum, at the San Andres Sports and Civic Center in Malate, Manila, a couple of weeks back.
Mr. Oyson, in a conversation right before this piece took form, said the only similarity between the published reports is that Z won.
So, when is a donut a donut?
Oyson said Recah Trinidad of the Philippine Daily Inquirer described the fight as straight up and firm as a hot, hand-dipped and homemade pastry eaten best with a steaming cup of java.
“He’s supposed to fascinate. He nearly succeeded in putting the whole stadium to sleep...He sent frustrated fans leaving and calling it a night with still three good fights left in the stellar card,” Trinidad wrote.
But the local media described a fusty-soft bread without its hole.
It was the Thai boxer’s fault, they said. It was he who refused to fight, thereby taking from the Cebuano aspirant the chance to show his wares.
There were, in some circles, criticism hurled against Oyson’s “pervasive negativism” by constantly looking at the hole and consistently forgetting about the donut.
“Many journalists are fond of pounding us with the phrase ‘purity of the sport.’ After three decades of watching boxing – amateur and professional – bouts, I still have to see or feel this purity. With commercialism getting its grimy hands on boxing at all levels, it is too much to hope to perceive this purity,” Paul wrote in Oyson’s defense.
The managers and promoters involved in the Gorres-Kengkarum fight wanted the details played up. Who would, as Paul pointed out, want to spend several hundreds or thousands of pesos to see a fight between gloved paraplegics?
But that the local media willingly obliged to the pre-fight hype, and then looked the other way when Gorres didn’t quite live up to his “sensational” billing, in the same way Kengkarum was not at all that “hard-hitting,” such is most imprudent.
Oyson was more direct: “Nobody bites the hand that feeds it.”
“Sports is different now,” said Roberto “Bobby Knight” Inoferio, writer, producer, director and anchor all rolled into one of the weekly Sports Communicators Organization of the Philippines (Scoop) Forum at the Baseline Restaurant, when we chanced upon each other the other at the Kamagong Gun Club Firing Range last Saturday.
It is no longer the action, the local basketball and boxing authority said, that draws the writer to a game. Now, he added, things supposed to be extraneous to a journalist’s life – sponsorships, ads promotions and, yes, even the occasional allowance – dictate whether or not coverage will be extended.
It’s rolling with the times, he maintained, adding that things aren’t exactly easy now.
I would agree if I didn’t fancy myself a product of the Old School.
All of us learn to write in the second grade, the real Bobby Knight – American basketball coach Robert Montgomery – once said. But, if I may add my voice to his, only very few will have what it takes to become journalists.
A piece I wrote a few weeks back was received negatively by a sector in the shooting community. For it, I got described as a divisive factor that rocks the boat in what used to be a placid (read...dead) lake.
I can’t help it. I’m a journalist and, despite the phrase’s baneful beginning, I am duty bound to Finley Peter Dunne’s instruction to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
MATCHES. The Col. Felipe Perez Testimonial Cup kicked off at the Kamagong Gun Club Firing Range yesterday, with a total of 70 shooters from the various gun clubs in Cebu taking part in the four-stage action.
Perez is the AFP Central Command’s current assistant chief of staff for intelligence, who is set to retire next month. Col. Ceferino Layao, Kamagong Gun Club president, said the match was held to honor the soldier who has “kept an unblemished record after a career that has spanned two decades.”
In the civilian category, shooter Jeffrey Alce, who finished second in the just concluded 1st Reynaldo Parojinog Cup in Ozamiz City, topped the Open Division in yesterday’s match, leaving behind rivals Joe Montalvan and Ric Bono, Habib Diator and Marlene Effelberger, who subsequently bagged the Women’s category award.
Benson Yu, also a top finisher in the Parojinog competition and a touted contender in the upcoming 5th Regional Director’s Cup in Iligan City on the 19th and the Iligan City Mayor’s Cup in September, meanwhile bagged the Standard Division plum together with Dino Cinco, Roger Uy and Yogi Javier.
The Modified Division eventually went to Ramon Vidal of the host club, while the Production and Revolver Division awards went to Dino Ang and Chito Hernandez and Jimmy Yu and William Torrefiel respectively.
In the military and lawman category, the awardees were Col. Jim Rodrigo, M/Sgt. Tito Mariano, Lt. Cmdr. John Garaña and Lt. Delbert Siasoyco of the Philippine Navy and P/C. Insp. Efren Nemeño.
(knrama@sunstar.com.ph)
(August 15, 2005 issue)
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