Their private 'miracles'

Until now, more than two weeks after the celebrated Pacquiao-Morales encounter in Las Vegas, people I meet still ask about the fight, obviously still eager to hear more first-hand accounts of the event that I had witnessed at the Thomas and Mack Center. I thought that I had written more than enough about that happening, and that I had done so with great daring, considering the little I really know about the sport. In fact, old readers of the STAR should remember what this column has aired so many times about the bloody sport.

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What I hear from Manny Pacquiao's local fans, however, are not too different from what Filipinos, even the Fil-Ams and in-laws of Pinoys in the U.S. had been saying: How they had prayed and hoped for their countryman's victory, especially because, they, like so many of us, felt that he got a raw deal in that first match between him and the pugilist his countrymen call "El Terrible", Erik Morales. I noted that when we landed at the Los Angeles airport on January 14 (15 already in RP), a plane from Mexico was also coming in and its passengers were in a line parallel to ours at Immigration. Even there, the Pinoys and the Mejicanos seemed to be measuring each other already. I also observed (bitchily, I confess) that I had never seen so many fat people together in my life.

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I know that those same people, fat and thin (so few of the latter) were also rooting and praying for their man. It was almost an encounter between two countries. Which was unfortunate, because we have so many good dealings with Mexico in the past, it was our link to our then Mother Country, Spain. It was also where the galleons bringing imported stuff from abroad, made stopovers to load more items for the Philippines.

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Maybe remembrance of this accounted for the fact that no hot-headed Pinoy had smashed a bottle into the head of any Morales fan during the match. I only know of one incident where that almost happened, and this was when a Filipino, a Bacoleño at that, got riled at the curses in Spanish coming from a Mexican behind him, and yelled at the bemoustached fan: "Say that in English!" The Mexican group, stunned, kept quiet after that. But we were not very proud of ourselves then.

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But I cannot forget what my seatmate on the plane coming home narrated as we were winging away from LA, or LAX, as airport people like to call it. Mary Legaspi of Bambang, Tarlac, who is in her late eighties, and who said she lives half of the year in various states of the U.S. and half in different provinces of RP, because her 13 children are scattered in those places, recalled a "miracle" she attributes to her prayers for Pacquiao.

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Mary said she settled herself in front of her TV set in LA, armed with her rosary and novenas. She said she became worried when Morales seemed to be ahead in the first two rounds. But, she said triumphantly, "When I reached the third mystery of the holy rosary, I saw Manny Pacquiao growing taller, almost as tall as Morales. His arms also grew longer, and his fists bigger and bigger!" She said her prayers were interrupted several times when she had to clap and cheer, but when she reached the fifth and final mystery, it was the tenth round, and Pacquiao already won decisively.

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I feel bad that I had no more time to tell Pacquiao this although we were on the same flight home, and even got off the plane about the same time - I went a little ahead, hoping to take some photos - because so many people, especially PAL officials and crew, were crowding around him already. But I'm sure that if one asked around in Bacolod and Negros Occidental, one might hear of similar stories of faith and support, aside from those of people whose hearts could not take the excitement and stopped ticking away.*

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