IT IS hard for me to imagine that Recah Trinidad is dead.
He was such a force of nature that even Manny Pacquiao couldn’t have knocked him out in a bare knuckle combat.
Famed novelist Erwin Castillo, the dude Recah had admired so deeply, knows this all too well.
They’d fight mano-a-mano as a way to pause from a drinking session — both shirtless — in the dead of night. If one had lost a tooth amid sheer brutality, it’d be a secret Recah would love to carry to his grave.
Recah wasn’t just tough as nails.
He was so indestructible that even a wayward train was no match.
And then he died. At 83. On Sept. 13.
He got blind-sided.
When he wasn’t looking, the dreaded thief of the night struck. Heart attack in June.
But he was Recah the
implacable.
So, he fought with all his might from his hospital bed, throwing in the towel only after almost a three-month struggle to succumb by TKO.
Recah was basically a magazine writer, but sportswriting was where his heart was.
He loved sports so much he’d hang out with sportswriters at every opportunity.
His writing skill was unmatched, which bordered on science as he was a master of the economy of words.
Whether written or spoken, Recah was distinctly different. When it came to choosing action words, he was peerless. Imagery was second nature to him.
He described Muhammad Ali the “absolute genius,” Paeng Nepomuceno “ball of fire” and Eugene Torre “board bomber.”
Incorrigibly irreverent, he called Jesus Christ Pareng Jess.
We started working together at Panorama, the Sunday magazine of Bulletin, in 1981. He moved in from Expressweek, the Daily Express supplement.
After one article at Panorama, Recah said to me he was quitting. He minded that Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, then Panorama editor, had edited his maiden piece.
“Letty does not like my style,” Recah rued.
But we were on our usual beer binge then. And so, it was anything goes, if you know what I mean. All that jazz — whining if you will — would be gone the next morning.
Recah was my mentor, my idol and, most importantly, my constant drinking buddy for years. Many were the nights that we drowned in beer, or any alcohol-spiked drink. Name it, we gulped it.
We eventually ended up as Inquirer sports columnists after the 1986 Edsa Revolt.
While his sports columns at Inquirer stung “like a bee,” they were actually mostly poetry. His obras were pure literary prose disguised as journalism.
In one drunken, starry, starry night, Recah stood up and described my writing as “trash good as cash.”
A poet’s pinch?
After saying that, he embraced me and said: “Isang beer pa at iingglisin na kita.”
Rest now, my friend. Memories, like flowers, may wither but are never forgotten.
