A night full of nostalgia has Black reminiscing good old days
Norman Black quickly recalled memories of his early days in the Philippines when he found out that San Miguel Beer was going to wear a retro version of his first uniform.
“The San Miguel uniform is really close to my heart because it was my first championship,” the Meralco consultant said before his ex-team wound up beating the Bolts, 110-98, in a throwback-themed PBA Philippine Cup game that capped the celebration of the league’s 50th anniversary at Rizal Memorial Coliseum.
San Miguel’s threads, however, were not the traditional wordmark that Black, Samboy Lim, Ramon Fernandez and Hector Calma paraded stretching from the Grand Slam season of 1989 until the early ’90s, nor the cartoonish mug that Nelson Asaytono and later Danny Seigle, Danny Ildefonso and Olsen Racela donned till the entry of the 21st century.
It was a replica of the unis, the wordmark having a scripted font, from 1982, the same year Black debuted for the Beermen under coach Tommy Manotoc.
In his first conference, San Miguel made it all the way to the Finals of the Open Conference as underdogs against the fabled Toyota team led by Robert Jaworski and eventual season MVP Fernandez. The Beermen did take a 3-2 lead in the first-ever seven-game PBA finale before losing the last two to the Super Corollas, who were reinforced by Donnie Ray Koonce.
But San Miguel bounced back in the Invitational, with Black powering the Beermen past another iconic ballclub in the Crispa Redmanizers, taking the deciding Game 3 for only San Miguel Corp.’s second crown.
Beermen victorious
“I still have my red uniform that I wore from 1982 back in the day. Kinda tight-fitting,” said Black, whose team actually donned mismatched jersey-short colors. “But those were the good old days. That was the old Araneta Coliseum before it was renovated. And those were the high-scoring days back in the ’80s.”
Black may have a soft spot for San Miguel and those jerseys, but Wednesday saw Meralco absorb its first defeat as the Beermen leaned on June Mar Fajardo and CJ Perez in the fourth to foil the comeback instrumented by rookie Kurt Reyson.
Meralco sported jerseys from its 1971 Micaa championship run with the company’s old logo and rainbow-like trims. Both uniforms were among the retro features of the contest, including television graphics in the ’70s and the appearance of veteran broadcasters from the PBA’s past and present.
Sev Sarmenta, Quinito Henson and Andy Jao called the game for RPTV, while Chiqui Roa made a return as courtside reporter. Meanwhile, coliseum announcer Sirjay dela Cruz was tasked to call the fouls, threes and substitutions as if it was in the ’70s and ’80s before reverting back to the current practice for the second half—except for the famous “last two minutes! last two minutes” in the homestretch.
Jimmy Noblezada, who was part of the first-ever game on April 9, 1975, gave Fajardo and Raymond Almazan a friendly elbow after being introduced at tipoff at the 91-year-old coliseum.
A formal gathering, which is a private gala, will be held on Friday night at Solaire North in Quezon City, with longtime officials and personalities set to be honored as well as the PBA’s 50 Greatest Players.
