Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball
By Rafe Bartholomew
Welcome to the Philippines, where the men are five foot five, the everyman’s Air Jordans are a pair of flip-flops, and the rhythm of life is punctuated by the bouncing of basketball.
Rafe Bartholomew arrived in Manila with little more than a Fullbright scholarship and an urban legend that Filipinos loved basketball more than anyone else on the planet. He’d heard that the locals constructed jerry-rigged hoops out of any material they could get their hands on – car hoods, driftwood, twisted rebar – and build courts everywhere, from cluttered street corners to the slopes of volcanoes and in the thick of jungles. (more below)
Allured by the idea of an island nation full of people who love the game as irrationally as he does, American journalist Rafe Bartholomew arrived in Manila to unlock the riddle of basketball's grip on the Philippines. On his unforgettable journey, Bartholomew spends a season inside the locker room of a Philippine professional team, dines with politicians who exploit hoops for electoral success, travels with a troupe of midgets and transsexuals who play exhibition games at rural fiestas, and even acts in a local soap opera. Sweating his way through hard-fought games of 3-on-3, played with homemade hoops for 50-cent wagers, Bartholomew uses a mix of journalistic know-how and the hard- court ethics he learned from his dad to get in the paint and behind the scenes of Filipinos' against-all-odds devotion to the sport.
Basketball fans of all ages are invited to come to Powerbooks Greenbelt on August 24 / 6PM as we play host to Rafe’s homecoming and book launch of Pacific Rims. The program will be hosted by HARD BALL and ANC News Anchor Mr. Bill Velasco.
Pacific Rims is now available at all Powerbooks branches in hardbound edition for P895.00. Grab your copies now and get a chance to have your books signed by Rafe. See you there!
