filipinos and baseball

with the mlb all-star game tomorrow, i decided to take a look at the state of philippine baseball today. the info is out there online but a bit hard to find.

philippine baseball has a glorious past. the game was introduced during the u.s. colonial period in the philippines. it was pretty popular in the 30s when the rizal memorial stadium was built.


picture from titansbaseballclub.org.

there was also a renaissance in the 50s when according to this the ny yankees visited the philippines and put on quite a show.

right now, though, it's pretty bad. basketball is by far the dominant sport in the philippines, and as with all sports over there, funds for training players and building good facilities are far from adequate. when i visited 2 years ago, my cousins loved to talk about the nba w/ me. and during my stay there i heard nothing about the sport of baseball.

my best memory of anything related to philippine baseball is unfortunately a dubious one. i do remember watching the 1992 little league world series on tv w/ my parents when a team from zamboanga city in mindanao crushed the long beach team 14 to 4. some time later though, the philippine team was stripped of their title when it was discovered that the team had players that lived outside of zamboanga city and that were over the age limit. from that point i stopped hearing about the philippines' participation in little league baseball.

despite all this, however, baseball still thrives among some filipinos. although not too well-known, there are several recreational teams/leagues in the metro manila area and elsewhere. several filipinos have made it to the major leagues, most notably benny agbayani (born in hawaii), most known for his stint w/ the new york mets. another filipino player who made it was one bobby chouinard, although looking at his profile here his career ended on a bad note.


picture taken from here

the above photo is of one bobby balcena, the first known filipino to play in major league baseball. although he didn't play that much in the majors, he played many years in the minors, specifically in the pacific coast league. he died in 1990.

balcena is the great uncle of current ucla softball player jodie legaspi. this article written in late may gives more detail about both of them.

baseball in the philippines isn't getting much attention right now, but recently softball did. check this out; a team from bacolod city won the jr. softball world series just 2 years ago.