A Game for Underdogs

I’m a total sucker for underdogs. It all started way back in 1988, on a Sunday, just after church, when I saw for the first time on a small glossy cardboard poster that was being peddled by street hawkers outside the church a photo of a mestizo looking man whose hair was similar with those of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker but with slightly receding hair on the forehead. He sported that red jersey with the number seven standing out with a trademark and logo of a liquor that I usually see displayed in my aunt’s mini sari-sari store. That basketball player seemed old that time, and somehow, that man always reminded me of my uncle whenever I think about it.

The man on that poster photo looked aloof standing steady—the photo was picture perfect as it vibrantly displayed the man’s tight grip on the orange ball in a shooting stance that would seem to be an attempt to deliver a freebie shot—a free throw.

In that same year and with the help of my uncle’s encyclopedia collection, in particular, volume 2 which archives all matters starting with the letter B, I studied the rules of a game created by a man whose last name I always mistook for a city in Tennessee.

After learning the rudiments of that game, my passion for it was further enhanced because newspapers’ sports section kept on screaming on their headlines how that man’s team overcome all odds to come from behind and eventually win the game.

When my uncle got transferred to a new assignment, we could now see live games on TV despite adjusting the contrast control knobs as our antenna booster did not acknowledge the channel broadcasting the games.

My uncle, a serious man but with a generous heart, also took to watching the game because of the passion I displayed to support that man’s team. I have never played the game on an actual court and only used my imagination playing and shooting a ball of old thick socks on a makeshift ring made of twisted wire nailed on my uncle’s backyard wall. My uncle, out of pity, bought me a mini basketball and a ring set in the summer of 1989.

Inspired by my idol, my friends, my brothers, and I would play streetball on a makeshift basketball ring in our neighborhood. We would play our hearts out sometimes until the approach of dusk. But we never got to play a real tournament game whether it is a school intramural or a barangay inter-color tournament: we were too small.

Although rejected by the game that I love, I still kept on following the game that eventually leads to me discovering a far more advanced level of the game and coming across strange names like Bird or a monicker like Magic.

By 1990, my uncle and I were now substantial followers of the game: watching games played on American soil, the regular conferences of the local league that we have been following since 1988, and sometimes, broadcasts of those of the Olympic types.

When my uncle got sick and was intermittently confined in the hospital, we would still set the dial on our favourite channel to watch, you guess it right, basketball. We developed a not too formal fatherly bond during those moments.

Before my uncle got sick, he taught me the essential skills only a real father can do. Skills necessary for a real man to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. My Tito taught me the proper use of English and corrected my grammar—he was a trial court judge. The judge instructed me to go on errands to different government offices so I could learn to speak with people other than my family. My uncle taught me how to drive a car and get licensed i.e., notwithstanding the several scratches incurred by his mustang automobile after my several attempts to park his car. In college, I would accompany him in court and experienced being the youngest paralegal cum driver in the history of the trial courts. He supported my appreciation of the wonder of books, and in hush tones, whenever I had arguments with my aunt, offered a piece of fatherly advice to overcome my over-sensitiveness.

We would watch one basketball game one last time together in his room with oxygen tubes and all: it was a championship game that saw a team from Chicago clinching the title while the finals itself garnering the highest Nielsen TV ratings in NBA history. He died a few days after that championship game.

I stopped watching basketball—didn't even cared to check statistics like I used to—since then.

Before that 1998 NBA finals, we were still watching the games of that man with the number seven jersey. We always loved that man’s team. They were always the underdogs. I was an underdog. But my uncle, may he rest in peace, believed in me: the way a fan felt in that man with the number seven jersey and his team of underdogs.