SAN FRANCISCO–Somewhere, probably on the front nine holes of that Big Golf Course in the Sky, Pinoy great Celestino Turgot was smiling on Tuesday.
You would have think that, through the Celestial Communication Network, the six time winner of the Filipino Open was smiling warmly to learn that boxing great and Congressman from Sarangani Manny Pacquiao was, ever so briefly, a guest of President Barack Obama at the White House.
Turgot wouldn’t care about Pacman’s hairstyle or about his jacket sleeves needing some trimming and neither should you.
Turgot would be thrilled, I think, to know that for the first time since he visited enthusiastic golfer and president Dwight Eisenhower in the White House some (about) 60 years ago, another Pinoy sports superstar was getting similar attention from an American leader.
I sat with boxing veterans Don Chargin and Bill Caplan here Wednesday night and we collectively scratched our gray heads trying to remember the last time a boxer, American or otherwise, was a guest at the White House. Obviously, this would not include President Clinton embracing Muhammad Ali at the Atlanta Olympics.
The three of us, with probably a collective 150 years spent around boxing, came up blank. We were reaching back as far as Joe Louis and asking if the immortant “Brown Bomber” ever posed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, perhaps when Louis was in the US Army during World War II.
We were grasping for straws.
So, today, we hail Manny Pacquiao, the Philippines favorite boxer of all time.
We hail Pacquiao, the current most popular fighter across all 50 American states.
And we hail Pacman as the world’s most popular figher now and the most universally known and liked since the heyday of Ali.
Obama hailed Pacquiao and now we can do no less.
Haircuts? Sleeve lengths? That’s just Gossip Girl stuff although it can make for fun and amusement if not taken seriously.
It’s all a part of the fame game and, trust me, no one knows this better Pacquiao himself.
From the outhouse to the White House, from poverty to prominence, from burlap to satin and from Gensan to Manhattan.
The popularity contest is over, it’s Manny Pacquiao, winner by unanimous decision.
If and when he fights Floyd Mayweather, it will be about race but to paraphrase the old Joe Louis line, Manny is a credit to his race…the human race.
