No joy in Ginebra land

The title of this piece is adapted from the last lines of the classic sports poem “Casey at Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Taylor.

This is probably similar to what Barangay Ginebra fans are feeling this holiday season. The imaginary baseball hero Casey struck out and failed to save the Mudville side from turning the game around in the final inning.

Although it’s been almost two weeks since Talk ‘N Text eliminated Ginebra in the PBA Philippine Cup playoffs, there has been an ache among the fans over another fruitless conference.

It’s been a while since the team has gone all the way to a title, not since the 2008 Fiesta Conference. The pain expressed in tweets, playful memes or open letters, mostly in social media sites, reflect a disappointment that despite the current lineup, the team failed to go deep into the playoffs.

Ginebra is not exactly the New York Yankees or the Boston Celtics but you get the feeling that their fans react in very much the same tone when the Yanks and the Celts don’t make much of a season.

The Yankees are of course baseball’s most dominant team with 27 World Series crowns while the Celtics have the most NBA titles with 17. It’s understandable when the cities that support them express disgust over fruitless seasons. Winning has been a tradition for these places and losing is not exactly easy to swallow.

By no means is Ginebra in the same dynastic cut as the Yankees and Celtics.  Ginebra has won eight PBA titles, sixth in the all-time list behind teams like Crispa, Toyota, and San Miguel.

But there’s no question that Ginebra brings in the most fans into the venues.  Most of them began catching the Ginebra mystique when Robert Jaworski was still defying time and tradition by coaching and playing at the same time. In 1986, Jaworski played all 53 minutes of an overtime championship game against Manila Beer and sealed the deal the next game with a title.

There was the 1991 Ginebra comeback against Shell when, down 3-1 in the series, Jaworski’s crew rallied back to win the next three games and the title.

It is this resilience and comeback quality that Jaworski bequeathed to the present-day Ginebra team. Other PBA teams hate it when Ginebra starts a rally and the crowd gets behind the team to chant that three syllable cheer that thunders in the venue.  “Gi-neb-ra! Gi-neb-ra!” the faithful roar. The rally doesn’t always work but the fans are content that they rallied behind a team that had a chance to turn things around.

This is perhaps where the pain lies, when tradition does not merge seamlessly with present realities. Fans waited for that Ginebra rally in the Talk ‘N Text game but it never really materialized.

One can sense that most teams now know how to adjust to Ginebra when it starts wearing its rally caps and their fans get behind them. They will fight for every possession and be careful with the ball to disallow Ginebra from building a fire inside the venue.

But hope springs eternal for Ginebra fans and they wait for that day when they can again cheer for a championship. And like diehard fans of other PBA teams, they remain faithful because that is the essence of being quite simply, a fan.

Have a joyful and blessed Christmas!

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