OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: 50 years in sportswriting and counting
By Eddie Alinea of The Manila Times
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 30 Aug 2020
Eddie Alinea.
August is about to end. On Tuesday, starts the next four months of the year ending in ER. Meaning, too, the start of the longest celebration of the Christmas Season in the world.
This column, however, is not about how this poor country of ours celebrate the five-month celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s about how important the month of August is in this OUTSIDER’s life as a newspaperman.
On Saturday, August 29, marked my 81st birthday. Opo, ang inyo pong kolumnistang ito ay 81 taong gulang na. Super senior citizen na, wika nga ng marami na ang kahulugan, sa panahong ito ng pandemya ay bawal nang lumabas ng bahay dala ng aking edad at ng marami pang iba.
This month of August, too. is when I observe my 62nd year as a worker in a newspaper publication. It was in August in 1958 when the then Roces family-owned TVT (Tribune-Vanguardia-Times) as a member of its family as newspaper carrier, whose job was to deliver subscription copies of its morning papers MANILA TIMES and TALIBA and sister afternoon paper DAILY MIRROR.
I was then pursuing a college degree and because of this, Mr. Chino Roces, who TIMES employees adoringly called “Tatay” (we called his sister, Dña. Isabel ”Nanay,” gave me exclusive right to use one of the small room in the mailing department for me to freshen up after each day of delivering the TIMES-MIRROR-TALIBA.
My ever dependable bike din po kasi ang gamit ko pagpasok sa eskuela tapos ng delivery sa umaga, pagbalk sa hapon para mag-rasyon ng MIRROR at balik sa school for my evening classes.
From that humble beginning this soon-to-be reporter rose from the ranks to become a general services staffer (janitor-messenger) allowing me to work in the different departments of the newspaper industry where its chief assigned me.
From there, I finally experienced doing office works as clerk in the circulation department, collector traffic-in-charge in the collection department then advertising deskman.
Having a nary an experience in journalism, I never dreamt of someday I will be a reporter. Ang pangarap ko lang noon ay magkaroon ng mataas-taas na posisyon sa alimang departamento para magkaroon ng magandang buhay sa hinaharap.
But as fate would have it, after a long 14-year of hopping from one department to another, I was appointed, on the strength of recommendation from the TIMES sports editor Tony Siddayao, as sportswriter.
My stint as a carrier, which allowed me to take part in several cycling races as Tour of Luzon eliminations and other local competitions opened the gate for me to befriend veteran sportswriters and sports editors, among them Gus Villanueva of the MIRROR, Bert Cuevas of the CHRONICLE, Lito Fernandez of BULLETIN and even Teddy Benigno then of the French News Agency (AFP), who all became my tutors in my alien job as sports journalist.
My stint as TIMES sportswriter was short that lasted only a little more than a year when then President Marcos closed all the media outfits following the declaration of Martial Law.
That proved to be enough, though, to further make a name for myself. Barely a year after the declaration of military rule, I was taken by then Philippines News Agency general manager Joe Pavia, who, later named me the government news arm’s first sports editor serving as such until the historic 1976 EDSA Revolution.
The next, as we often say, is history.
Among my most memorable moments of my international sports coverages are the 1975 Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier world heavyweight championship fight known as “Thrilla in Manila” where I was also named Frazier’s press liaison officer, 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and 1996 Atlanta Centennial, Olympic Games,
1974 World Women’s Softball Championship in Bridgeport, Connecticut; 1974 World Cycling Championships in Montreal. Canada; 1978 World Men’s Basketball Championship in Manila; 1978 World chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio City; 1981 World Road Cycling Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1981 World Track Cycling Championships, Bruno, Czechoslovakia; 1981 World chess Olympiad in Malta; 1979 World Golf Championship;
1992 World Men’s Softball Championships in Manila; 1992 World Chess Olympiad in Manila; ,1993 World Speed Shooting Championships, Fresno, California; 1993 International Practical Shooting Confederation World Shoot, Bisley, England; American Handgunners World Shoot Off, Montrose, Colorado; 1986 Seoul Asian Games; 2002 Busan Asian Games; Southeast Asian Games from 1977 till 2019; plus a sprinkling of World Little League Softball and Bronco Baseball Championships.
Editor's Note: Aside from the many world sporting events Eddie Alinea covered as enumerated above, Ka Eddie, as he is fondly called by Filipino sports journalists, he has also been a fixture of Manny Pacquiao's fights in the United States and other parts of the world.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea of The Manila Times.
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