Remember the Wranglers

Tommy Manotoc cherishes his first two championships as much as his Grand Slam. —PHOTO COURTESY OF MATTHEW MANOTOC

Back in the day when the PBA was still a rough, physical league, when players without scientific knowledge of the game rose to be superstars and it was the only viable sports entertainment vehicle in the country, there was only one rivalry worth mentioning: Crispa versus Toyota. Toyota versus Crispa. Nothing came close. Nothing still does.

And their games—against anyone and most especially against each other—during the early years were, no offense to the other teams that made up the league, the only ones that mattered at the box office and in television ratings.

Championships? Only the Redmanizers or the Super Corollas won them, almost without exception.

Until a gritty bunch of discards that made up a U-Tex squad handled by the brilliant Tommy Manotoc interrupted their reign. Twice.

“The first one, the 1978 Open versus Crispa, was special, because it finally broke their (Crispa and Toyota’s) stranglehold of the league,” Manotoc told the Inquirer in an overseas call recently, when asked to recall those championships with the league celebrating its 45th year this month.

“The second was even more special because in the way we pulled it out, and of course, because we claimed a second title at the expense of the other team that dominated the PBA in its early years,” he said.

Manotoc, whose true passion is golf, took over in the 1978 second conference from Narciso Bernardo as he was elevated from team manager to coach by management, which wanted to end fruitless years of participation that dated back to the defunct Micaa.

One of Manotoc’s first moves was to ship superstar Danny Florencio and another player to 7-Up, before bringing in the charismatic Byron “Snake” Jones as an import to eventually beat Crispa, 3-0, in the best-of-five title series.

While Crispa and Toyota were loaded with the biggest superstars and the up-and-coming talents because of their frenzied recruiting ways—the Rookie Draft wouldn’t see birth until 1985—Manotoc had broken-down players and unheralded names, save for the late Lim Eng Beng, making up the core of his squad.

Proof of that was when the Wranglers traded for William “Bogs” Adornado for P100,000 with Crispa. Adornado, of course, was just coming off a knee injury that made a few experts write him off.

“We knew that Bogs still had a lot left in him,” Manotoc recalled. “He was one of the best scorers [at that time] and you can never question his heart—that he wanted to return to the form that he once had. He wasn’t a two-time MVP for nothing.”

But it wasn’t Adornado alone who gave the Wranglers the 1980 Open Conference title over Toyota, but also one of the first true NBA veterans that the league saw in Glenn McDonald and Aaron James.

Another player who had trouble with his knees before, Fritz Gaston, was also a vital cog, like former rookie of the year Gil Cortez, Jimmy Noblezada and Jimmy Taguines.That championship will be remembered more for how the Wranglers pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat, as they were down by four with 16 seconds remaining in regulation.

McDonald was on the break with Francis Arnaiz giving chase and Andy Fields behind the star Toyota gunslinger yelling “No foul! No foul” in the final U-Tex offensive.“I can vividly recall that play,” Manotoc said. “And the sounds of that play. I was pretty sure that Fields was going to try and swat away the layup because he was directly behind Arnaiz.”

Arnaiz gave up the foul, McDonald made the two charities to tie the game and the Wranglers won in overtime, 99-98.

“I can never forget those championships, because we were true underdogs,” Manotoc, who would later win titles with San Miguel and a Grand Slam with Crispa in 1983, said. “I felt U-Tex left its mark in the PBA because of that.”The Wranglers did—as the third-best team in the league during its first decade—and they deserve to never be forgotten as the league enters its next 45 years. INQ