’Bye Ginebra: No heavy heart this time

Sorry about that again, but looks like fans will have to seriously start looking for a surrogate to perennial crowd favorite Barangay Ginebra.

Its latest exit said it all: Ginebra will find it twice as hard moving back from the sunset bend where it dropped out of sight on Tuesday.

Many, if not majority, among original Ginebra rooters in the morning wet market were nowhere near when their squad again fell in fragments after allowing itself to be shamed and manhandled by mighty Talk ’N Text in the fight for semifinal slots of the PBA Commisioner’s Cup.

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Diehard Louie Sanyano, peppery meat cleaver with two front teeth missing, no longer cried unlike before, the old anguish gone much ahead of Ginebra’s characterless last game.

The fall felt twice as terrible than their ouster in the previous conference where the Gin Kings, originally favored with a tall and supposedly talented lineup, gave up only in the do-or-die Game 7.

Clear underdogs this time, there were still faint hopes the Gin Kings would at least flash signs of their vaunted never-say-die spirit.

Sorry, there was neither a threat nor a hint of the old come-from-behind magic.

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Of course, it will tell on live attendance, now that Ginebra has clearly lost both its hardy sock and crowd appeal.

Truth is PBA people were already plotting ways and means on how to control and contain the expected record hordes in the forthcoming championship series.

Yes, the PBA has started to get cozy hosting minus the original top crowd-drawer.

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(FIRELESS: Tame if not wholly colorless, nothing truly of note came out of the much-awaited face-off between President Noynoy Aquino and Pinoy superhero Manny Pacquiao in Malacañang on Monday.

The meeting took place an hour late of the original 1 p.m. schedule. The two top Filipino celebrities started and finished their talk pleasantly, thereby conveniently refusing to touch on the pestering tax problems of Pacquiao, who had been assessed a P2.2 billion deficit by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Just the same, poor daily wage earners out in our chaotic streets continue to hope the President would at least do something to provide Pacquiao some form of breathing room in his bout with BIR Commissioner Kim Henares. There is the poor-man view here which says that, in the first place, Pacquiao was a victim of his handlers, namely promoter Bob Arum and adviser Michael Konzc, who had gleefully tinkered with his earnings and tax declaration in the United States.)