apbr.org

[rlee]

by Bill Littlefield
Boston.com

“Pacific Rims’’ is one of those books with a subtitle almost too long for the cover: “Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball.”

At least one of the “beermen” is Billy Ray Bates, whose pro basketball career in the Philippines provides one of the more entertaining “whatever happened to him?” stories you’re likely to encounter. Bates played for four years in the NBA, but he peaked in 1983, employed by the Crispa Redmanizers in Manila. For the next several years, according to Rafe Bartholomew, Bates, who had “all-star talent and all-world athleticism,” was “a tank with wings . . . the closest most Filipinos ever came to seeing Michael Jordan or Julius Erving in person.”

Bartholomew’s tales of US players who were not quite good enough to stay in the NBA but found celebrity, notoriety or both in the Philippine pro ranks are sometimes cautionary and always entertaining, as are the tales of his own stint as an actor in a local TV soap opera, where he played the white guy. The author also explores the roots of the popularity of hoops in a country where “basketball is part of the evanescent core.” To accumulate evidence for that contention, Bartholomew spent time not only in the thriving pro league, but with “a troupe of midgets and transsexuals who play exhibition games at rural fiestas.”

Maybe somewhere there is somebody who has conducted more unlikely research to write a book about a sport. Maybe.
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“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
Albert Einstein

[HistoryofWomensBasketball]

I would love to get this authors email. With the All American Red Heads over there in 1940 playing for 4 months, he might have some ways to help track down some articles on those games before they were evacuated
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John Molina

Preservationist of History of Womens Basketball
www.womensbasketballmuseum.com
www.allamericanredheads.com

Co-Author of upcoming book on the All American Red Heads

2007 inductee CT Womens Basketball HOF

[rlee]

He is an assistant editor at Harper's Magazine in NYC - -perhaps you can reach him there:

http://www.filipinasmag.com/?p=781
_________________
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
Albert Einstein