DERBY DAYS/Crispa Redmanizers v Toyota Tamaraws:Such was the rivalry between these two teams that Manila police officers often outnumbered players in the dugout, writes DAMIAN CULLEN
THIS SATURDAY the 2009 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Fiesta Conference gets under way with 10 sides vying to reach the best-of-seven finals in June.
Far eclipsing soccer as the most popular spectator sport in the southeast Asian country, the 10 professional teams in the upcoming national competition includes such strangely christened teams as the Talk ’N Text Tropang Texters (who include among their ranks one Darius Rice, nephew of the legendary former NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice) and the Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants (who during the 1990s went through several guises, including the Purefoods Tender Juicy Hotdogs, the Coney Island Ice Cream Stars and the Purefoods Corned Beef Cowboys).
The names keep changing but the spectators continue to flock to support professional basketball teams in a country that was, despite the height disadvantage, once considered among the world’s greatest basketball nations.
The sport’s popularity was built on two planks – the foundation of the PBA in 1975 by nine rebel teams, who left the Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Association (MICAA) to create the oldest professional basketball league in Asia and the second oldest in the world (after the NBA in the US). And the concurrent beginnings of one of the greatest rivalries in the history of basketball.
The feud began on May 10th, 1975, with the first meeting of the Crispa Redmanizers and the Toyota Tamaraws in the Araneta Coliseum, a huge arena that would host the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manila” fight just five months later.
Two year’s earlier, during the final throes of the MICAA, Crispa had been caught in a match-fixing scandal that resulted in life-time bans for many team members. And so at the beginning of the new professional league, the Crispa team consisted of young, inexperienced players . . . but talented, and the Crispa team in the inaugural PBA season would contain five future MVPs.
It was the perfect balance to a well-established Toyota team that were expected to seamlessly step into the PBA era and continue their domination of the sport.
In fact, Crispa won the first meeting, but Toyota went on to claim victory in each of the year’s subsequent 13 meetings.
The following season, Crispa won 13 of the derby meetings, enroute to claiming a Grand Slam (there were three championships in each season).
It was a fittingly bizarre launch to a incredible rivalry. Two seasons, two wildly differing fortunes for each of the bitter enemies. In 1977, however, the rivalry was to turn into all-out war.
After a typically close-fought opening encounter on April 17th, 1977, Crispa prevailed, 122 to 121. As the players were exiting the court a free-for-all broke out – with Crispa’s Atoy Co and Toyota’s Ramon Fernandez the principal culprits.
Atoy Co, known as Fortune Cookie, was a member of the 1976 and 1983 Crispa Grand Slam Team and in 1979 claimed the Most Valuable Player award in the Philippines . The talented shooter became the first player in the league to score 5,000 points (in 1979) and 10,000 points (in 1984).
His record though pales in comparison to Fernandez, who won the MVP award four times and is still the all-time leading scorer (four short of 19,000 points). His prowess on the basketball court gave him a sufficient profile to run for a senatorial seat under the Nationalist People’s Coalition in the 1995 elections.
But in 1977 it was his hatred of Crispa that brought political repercussions. The brawling was so violent that both teams (including coaches, officials and even the waterboys) spent a night in Fort Bonifacio – the Philippine military headquarters. After paying fines, and hearing lectures on their responsibilities to act as models for the disciplined Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, they were all released without charge.
Every subsequent meeting would bring Metropolitan Manila to a standstill. Police often outnumbers players in the dugout. Even supporters of other PBA teams also often had an allegiance to one of the sport’s biggest rivalries.
And the importance of the clashes carried into the following decade. The fear of losing a derby game, never mind a season, drove players and officials.
In December, 1980, with Crispa enjoying an extended run of success over its fierce rival Toyota’s manager Pablo Carlos and coach Fort Acuna became embroiled in a half-time row over the coach’s refusal to play Robert Jaworski. MVP in 1978, the “Big J” – who would win a seat in the Philippine senate in the 1998 elections – was considered important enough for Carlos to fire Acuna on the spot and, with Jaworski now back on the court, Toyota turned a half-time deficit into a 97-94 victory. Humiliated on national television, Acuna later committed suicide. But the rivalry on its own could not sustain the entire league and, with the country in financial ruin in the early 1980s, Toyota folded at the end of the 1983 season.
Without its foe, Crispa stood little chance of surviving, and halfway through the following campaign the club was forced to also close its doors.
After only nine years of intense rivalry, the derbies were gone.
This weekend the PBA Fiesta Conference begins again. Two teams will be missing. But the greatest legacy of the derby games between Toyota and Crispa is, however, that the love-affair with basketball in the Philippines has endured.
