Last toast, first mentor
Late Saturday afternoons of childhood years would find me idling by the green gate of the house in UP Village, now since leveled by the onslaught of time and commerce, to wait for the advance copy of Sunday Times Magazine, where articles on the old basketball league MICAA were written under the byline Recah Trinidad, capturing the imagination of an elementary school kid smitten by the game.
It was our first glimpse into the wonders of journalism, more specifically sports reporting, never before seen in these parts but still a good introduction to that world of constant motion and rivalries, Yco vs. Ysmael, Crispa vs Meralco vs Mariwasa, RP vs South Korea in the ABC progenitor of FIBA Asia, and the necessary spoils of celebrity: Mr. Basketball Rudolph Kutch, fastbreak Freddie Webb, undergoal dervish Danny Florencio, original strongman Manny Paner.
All idols of a youth quickly squandered, but which Recah’s writing somehow kept larger then life. At Expressweek, where the sportswriter brought his act after martial law closed down the Manila Times, the chronicling of heroes and villains continued unabated, this time accompanied by sexy covers featuring Chiqui Brosas, Elizabeth Oropesa, Alona Alegre, further fueling adolescent dreams.
It was at the old Daily Express building in Port Area during the late ‘70s where I first visited him, mainly to contribute a sheaf of poems workshopped in university as well as in seaside Dumaguete the summer previous, one or two of which saw print.
Funny thing is, of the Expressweek staff, only Recah later moved to the Inquirer (of course with a few more stops in between), as the others eventually surfaced in The STAR: Ricky Lo, Millet Mananquil, Ching Alano. Not so surprising, come to think of it now: the sportswriter as poet and outsider.
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Well, the grizzled gin-guzzling Recah took a college dropout and aspiring writer under his wing to do the rounds of watering holes of the noble and ever-loyal city, mostly in Peter Lee’s Hong Kong Teahouse off TM Kalaw, where he would amuse the waiters by consuming two bottles of bilog then lighting one up and letting the empty bottle suction on his arm as if Christmas décor—must have been the ‘ber months because the PBA second conference was nearing its import-laden homestretch.
Else in the Rizal Memorial Café along Vito Cruz, just outside the basketball mecca where throngs of ghosts cheered on their teams way past the final buzzer and the monsoon rains poured relentless, somehow floods weren’t so common then, the terms “climate change” or “flood control scandal” weren’t yet invented.
The salad of the bad café (apologies to Cesar Ruiz) had, in fact, excellent pinakbet, and this the sportswriter would swear to, all while consuming interminable bottles of beer while ringing up his friends on the rotary phone, and here you have to excuse the namedrops: Erwin Castillo, Danilo Dalena, Ding Nolledo, Pepito Aguila, to come join the party, there’s someone I’d like you to meet, progeny of our old teacher, this with a wink and a nod.
It was Recah who provided a crucial assist when he gave us a column in Sports Flash in the mid-‘80s, “The Mopman” (title thanks to the missus), which ran for a year or two in the back cover page below the fold, underneath the editorial and the cartoon by, if we remember right, Willy Aguino. That was during the long twilight of the dictator, after the sportswriter set up and departed Tempo tabloid, still printing more than 40 years later.
His Tales from My Lost River, a historical novel set in his beloved city, is now a collector’s item in the manner of Platero y Yo, rare as the kanduli and apahap that once swam the Pasig.
More than a decade ago was launched the five-poet compendium that featured Recah alongside his bosom buddies and contemporaries Erwin Castillo, Jolico Cuadra, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, and Willy Sanchez, another book hard to find if not akin to the holy grail, at the Ortigas Center where we arrived late at the venue after work and post-traffic, and only the sportswriter remained as the rest of the party must have changed venue, but there he was with his faithful Torres brandy along with another holdout, the late director Chris Michelena.
During the pandemic I brought him a copy or two of my father’s books to his place on Enriquez Street, a couple of blocks from the riverside chapel, which helped lighten the mood of those difficult days.
Visited him again right after Gilas regained basketball gold in the Asian Games in 2023, although he had by then stopped drinking and wouldn’t touch the wine I brought him, something of a culture shock.
The following year his eldest son Chino died and with him smart sports commentary, and when I saw Recah and wife Fe at the wake the Rolling Stones’ Stop Breaking Down kept playing in my head. The last was between Christmas and New Year last year, somewhere around Niños Inocentes, and the couple offered me merienda of rice and bangus paksiw, not too much of it but left full and brimming with the spirit of the season, humble comfort food after the runaway holiday indulgences. To walk out at sunset in Vergara like no other, where “there were many tales of life and death, magic and misery in the village.” (Tales from my Lost River, Merryland Publishing 2013)
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