Where is Billy Ray Bates?
Late Friday night I got a text message from a colleague who hides under the name “The Inquisitor.”
As usual, he had a query and he thought I knew the answer: What happens to Alaska now that the Uytengsus have sold a bulk of their company to a European partner?
My first thought after reading the message was: How could I have missed out on such a PBA-connected story?
“Where did you get this story?” I immediately replied.
He said it was on cable news that night.
“Fred Uytengsu will remain president of the new firm, I think he may diversify and put his money on infrastructure and services, like almost all big businessmen are now doing. Alaska Milk had a very low income profit of only 20 percent last year,” the Inquisitor said, sounding very much like a business expert.
* * *
Early the next morning, I woke up to find a text message from Alaska governor Joaqui Trillo.
“The firm will still be known as Alaska and Fred remains president/CEO. The only difference is that we now have a very strong investor in Royal Friesland Campina (RFC), the fifth largest dairy company in the world,” Joaqui said. He also assured me that the Alaska franchise will stay in the PBA.
“Of course the Alaska Aces will still be around,” he said, “and hopefully we’ll become even stronger.”
* * *
Three decades after the Black Superman first made waves in the Philippines, Harbour Centre’s Mikee Romero was still star-struck.
This he admitted when he announced last year that he had hired the former PBA import to work for the Philippine Patriots as an assistant coach.
Mikee was excited to work with the once-sensational Billy Ray Bates, whose basketball skills he had always admired as a young boy.
The news, however, failed to elicit a reaction from me. I just told him I hope he doesn’t regret this move and wished him good luck.
“He has changed, Tita. He is now a God-fearing man, a bible always in one hand. The first thing he looked for when he arrived in Manila was a church where he could pray. He is a reformed man,” Mikee assured me.
* * *
However, just the other day, I read in the papers that Mikee had given Billy Ray his walking papers. For bad behavior.
Now why wasn’t I surprised?
About three weeks ago, Bates was the subject of spirited discussion at the PBA office in Libis after a board meeting. Word had it that the PBA hall-of-famer was certain to be sent home after he mauled somebody inside the hotel room where he was booked.
As the account went, Billy picked up a beautiful woman somewhere in Katipunan and brought her home with him in his hotel room, which was just around the vicinity.
At first, people working in the hotel didn’t hear any noise emanating from Billy’s room.
Then suddenly, there was a cry for help and it became evident that there was a violent struggle inside the room.
* * *
“Did Billy rape the girl? Did she fight back or was she angry that she didn’t get paid? Perhaps it was a sado-masochistic type of encounter,” I asked. “What happened to the girl? If you get battered by somebody of Billy’s size, you end up either in the hospital if you’re lucky, or the morgue.”
The storyteller said he never found out what happened to the girl. “She’s obviously still alive, though probably disabled,” he said.
“And please stop referring to her as a she because as it turned out, the lady was no lady but a man. This is the reason the impostor was mauled by Billy. He was duped!”
* * *
The PBA had all the best intentions when it invited Billy to come to the Philippines last year, all- expenses paid, to be inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame.
“We gave him a round-trip ticket to and from Manila, booked him in a five-star hotel and gave him some shopping money. He was supposed to go home after the affair, but he decided to stay. He said he wanted to try his luck here,” said PBA media bureau Willie Marcial.
As of yesterday, Billy Ray Bates the Black Superman, was reported missing. The Patriots driver came to pick him up at his Eastwood condo to drive him to the airport, where he was supposed to board his flight to the US. But he had vanished.
