Sunday, July 13, 2008 Quijano: Gifts from a Pope By Jingo Quijano Last Round
THE jaded cynic that I have become, I sometimes harbor the opinion that the milk of human kindness has indeed dried out—feverishly lapped up by a society that is either unwilling or unable to replenish and sustain it.
Free lunches are hard to come by bro’ and on the rare occasions that somebody does you a good turn, I am sadly inclined to believe that this person is bustin’ my chops.
But once in a while, a person comes by who restores your faith in the kindness of man, and so you cruise through life hoping to keep your outlook at an even keel.
Lately, Last Rounder John Pope (whom I have never met) tilted my outlook towards the positive side, when he deemed me worthy enough to receive two books (sent via mail), which he termed as gifts.
The first I will discuss here, while the other is stuff for another column.
Ever since I started out churning boxing columns for Sun.Star Cebu I have always wanted to get hold of A.J. Liebling’s “The Sweet Science” (North Point Press, 2004 Ed). So you can imagine my surprise when one of those gifts turned out to be this very same book, which Sports Illustrated magazine named as the best sports book of all time.
What is remarkable is that Liebling wrote about a number of subjects, and boxing was only a topic which he delved into while writing for a publication called “The New Yorker.”
His boxing accounts span between the 1930’s to 1960’s but his musings are as relevant today as they were then. Consider what he unveils about preliminary bouts:
“The notorious dreariness of the preliminaries at championship fights is due to a feudal arrangement whereby the managers of the main-bout fighters get berths for all their fighter’s stablemates and sparring partners on the preliminary card. The promoter fills in the remaining spots with the cheapest boxers obtainable.”
The thing about Liebling is that he just doesn’t write about boxing. He lives it, and as you devour each page, the book in turn devours you back and sucks you in. He brings you along for the ride and before you know it, you are watching the classic fights alongside him.
Consider this sagely advice on what one must do before a big fight:
“After lunch, I went back to my hotel to rest. This is always a good idea before a big fight, because you are going to have to battle crowds going in and you can never find a taxi coming out, and you often have to toddle home without benefit of daffy unless you are willing to battle more crowds to get to a bar.
Or how about his humor: “The fourth shows him standing above Georgie Abrams, a skillful pugilist who is so hairy that when knocked down he looks like a rug.”
But here’s my favorite paragraph:
“A boxer, like a writer must stand alone. If he loses, he cannot call an executive conference and throw off on a vice president or the assistant sales manager…A fighter’s hostilities are not turned inward, like a Sunday tennis player’s or a lady MP’s. They come out naturally with his sweat, and when his job is done he feels good because he has expressed himself.”
Of course, he wouldn’t be one of my favorite writers if he didn’t share a passion for beer as this Last Rounder:
“I missed the next two preliminaries because I was up at the top of the stand, waiting in line for a can of beer. The vendors who usually swarm all over the place, obstructing your vision at crucial moments in a fight, had disappeared, on the one night when their presence would have been welcome. So the customers had to queue up—a death march to get to a bar tended by exactly two men…At every third customer he would stop the line and threaten to pack up and call it a day. We would look at him beseechingly, too thirsty even to protest, and after enjoying our humiliation he would consent to sell more beer.”
THE LAST ROUND. It’s on pretty cherub Amanda Marie Castellano Ostrea. Welcome to the Christian world and Cheers!
