Controversial Law Increases Deportations (in National News) Indian Americans in Silicon Valley Raise Over $1 Million for Democrats (in Bay Area News) Asia's Unresolved Economic Issues (in Business) New Film Gemini's Double Pleasures (in A&E)

Emil Amok

---

Bottom of the Ninth

By Emil Guillermo

Reggie Jackson? Who’s he? I’m still Mr. October. For yet another year. And I didn’t have to hit a home run in game 3 of the National League Divisional Series. No, that Filipino was Benny Agbayani. More on him later.

I don’t hit homers in October. I hit birthdays.

I was born on the ninth, a day I share with such ideological opposites as that Mississippi helmet head Trent Lott—and the late Beatle John Lennon. Together they could have written “I Want To Hold Your Senate Bill.” It’s actor Fyvush Finkel’s birthday too. And all on a day that this year encompasses Yom Kippur and Columbus Day. As David Letterman asked of the current New York Senatorial candidate Hillary Clinton, “So is she Jewish or Italian on this day?”

The ninth is also the day Bolivian guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed on the way to the revolution in 1967. It’s the day Spanish missionaries first settled in San Francisco in 1776. The Padres would later find their way to San Diego. How do I know all this? Not because I’m old enough to remember it all. I’m just a student of history.

Hopefully, the visibility was better in 1776. Because in the year 2000, the missionaries would have had to take it on faith that they had found a “there” there. On this day, driving over the Bay Bridge, you couldn’t find San Francisco through the thick gray, wet shroud that hung over the city. The entire Bay Area was in mourning on the ninth. It was just that kind of weepy day, the day after both the Giants and the A’s struck out in their quest for a baseball championship.

I tried to celebrate my birthday by consuming copious amounts of my current favorite food, a real honest New York-style pizza, thin crust, sliced big enough to hold with two hands, from a place called Amici’s.

New York is the way I like my pizza. Not my baseball.

On Sunday night, the youthful A’s took on the old and decrepit Yankees, and fell in Oakland. They should have won. The Yanks, who had nickel and dimed their ways to wins, had the sun on their side early, which lead to a misplayed fly ball and three runs. And then the sun set on the A’s.

The Giants went to Queens with the best record in the National League to face what looked to be the punchless, pitchless Mets. The Giants were supposed to win and find their way back to the rematch of 1989, the earthquake series when the Giants and A’s played to a fault.

But the Giants couldn’t hit. They had exactly one on Sunday. And when their star stud Bonds struck out to end it all, well, that was just the kind of sad poetry that makes you know the baseball gods are not smiling on you.

You knew it in San Francisco, when in dramatic fashion last week, the Giants’ J.T. Snow hit a homer to send the game into extra innings—only to lose in the 10th.

And then there was the game that aged all Giants fans beyond our years on Saturday. The Giants jumped ahead, but couldn’t make two runs hold. It ended in what seemed like the 513th inning—with a Filipino at the plate who promptly put the ball over the fence.

Agonizing? No. Agbayani. I remember turning to my wife just seconds before his at-bat saying, “I could live with the Giants loss if Benny Agbayani hit a home run.” He did at just that moment. I should have bit my tongue.

I would have preferred a different outcome, but I have the silver lining that comes with my cloud. That would clearly be Agbayani.

Regular readers know I have sung the praises for Agbayani. Full disclosure demands that I mention how I recently outbid a Maui newspaper photographer for a signed Agbayani jersey at the silent auction of the Asian American Journalists Association in New York.

To a Filipino American like myself, to all Asian American baseball fans, Agbayani is our surrogate. We can’t imagine ourselves to be Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire. But Manong Benny? He’s one of us.

Which brings me to the most irritating thing in Benny’s success. What announcers call him. Not since Tiger Woods has there been as much confusion.

“Hawaiian Punch,” said the announcer. Cute, but Lapu Lapu didn’t drink Hawaiian punch. Even more curious is the phrase, “The Smokin’ Samoan.”

Sounds nice, but “smokin’”? Just what exactly is in the pipe, bruddah? Is that healthy? As for the Samoan part, well only half of him is, otherwise he’d be twice the size. The ornament on the hood is still Filipino.

“Agbayani.” Tagalog. Means hero.

I would prefer to call him the “Filipino Phenom.” Or in hip-hop style, the “Phat Filipino.”

Let’s keep that “f” and “ph” thing confusing everybody.

So I will be rooting for Benny. Just as the Dominicans go crazy for Sammy Sosa.

And I will be rooting for the Mariners, hoping for this World Series scenario: Game 7, bottom of the ninth, game on the line, Agbayani facing the Mariner’s star reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki. The typical Asian pitcher vs. the atypical Asian American slugger, Agbayani.

It’s not the Giants and A’s. But it’s baseball in the new America. And what a thing, to have all the world speaking Tagalog with one big blast.