MANNY PACQUIAO: MY SON'S POETICS

One gets the sense that boxing has yet to show Pacquiao anything as challenging as what he has lived through in the streets as a kid of General Santos,..
--Patrick Rosal

Today was the first practice for the ALL-STAR Soccer Team. It looks like the league's various teams chose their top five players to create an ALL-STAR team that will play some other area's ALL-STAR team this coming Saturday.

Today's scrimmage focused on melding these players for the first time. The two ALL-STAR coaches had to assess the kids, especially those new to them because they'd not coached them before, like Michael. A few other coaches stopped by, though, to check out the action....which is to say, this is a story of how I really had to control myself today from going after a big, burly man -- one of the coaches who clearly is not himself an ALL-STAR caliber -- and wallop him with my trusty umbrella-suddenly-turned kali stick. Let's call him Joe the Plumb..., okay, let's just call him Burly Joe.

So, my son -- again -- was the smallest guy on the team. Perhaps he's the smallest guy in the league -- I can't say I recall a shorter guy than him from the games I saw all season. So he's short...BUT, so what, right? He was on the team that won the Napa Cup and one would think -- if one was thinking -- that his size clearly must not have been detrimental because he wouldn't have been picked among the top five players sent to the ALL-STARS.

But Burly Joe obviously wasn't thinking (perhaps he can't from all that muscle? Let's call him Carne Head instead) because he arbitrarily switched Michael to play defender on a different guy. One of the coaches from Michael's regular team questioned that and Carne Head replied, "I'm just matching him up with a smaller guy..."

Oh Knucklehead, I mean Carne Head, Michael's taken the ball away from guys as big as three times his size! If you want to adjust his position because he's doing something wrong, okay. But don't arbitrarily make a decision based on his size (you must judge a book by its cover, right Meat Head?!)

What pissed me off -- what pained me the most -- was seeing the confused expression on Michael's face as he strove to understand why his position was shifted when he was handling it just fine ...

... I've been mentally fulminating over this all evening. I keep telling myself that the coach-who-also-looks-like-a-meatball just doesn't know Michael. The thing is, most of Michael's peers are soft when compared to what formed Michael's character, what he survived to end up as my son. Without going into details, what he survived is why he is not at all intimidated by bigger, burly players. Even then, a soccer game is not even a smidgen of a challenge compared to what he's clawed himself out of ...

Michael's growth spurt has started. But meanwhile, the steel in his spine is not evident from his small frame. Keep underestimating him, you Carne Head. I look forward to seeing him make bile out of your meat. Only a Pin@y or Child of a Pin@y can survive pinappaitan, di ba?

P.S. Another Soccer Mom, who'd observed Michael in action all season, actually suggested today I have Michael join his school's basketball team. Meat Head: extrapolate from that and learn.