Playing with the Big Boys: Basketball, American Imperialism,

and Subaltern Discourse in the Philippines by Lou Antolihao

(review)

Micah Jeiel R. Perez

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, Volume 66,

Number 4, December 2018, pp. 529-533 (Review)

Published by Ateneo de Manila University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/phs.2018.0037

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/714175

Access provided at 26 Jan 2020 06:08 GMT from University of Exeter

Book Reviews

LOU ANTOLIHAO

Playing with the Big Boys: Basketball,

American Imperialism, and Subaltern
Discourse in the Philippines
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017. 189 pages.

A lecturer at the National University of Singapore, Lou Antolihao specializes

in the study of sports, transregionalism, imperialism, and postcolonialism
in Asia. Playing with the Big Boys is his first book, although chapters 2 and
4 were originally published as articles in Sport and Society and Philippine
Studies, respectively (xviii).
Antolihao’s question is straightforward: Why is basketball popular in
the Philippines? The question, seemingly so innocent, comes loaded with a
host of historical and cultural baggage—from the sport’s origins as a tool of
American imperialism to modern-day concerns about the average Filipino’s
genetically imposed height ceiling. In fact, basketball’s ubiquity across the
archipelago and its supremacy over all other sports within the collective
national consciousness have often left foreign and local observers scratching
their heads in disbelief.
Richard Holt (“Historians and the History of Sport,” Sport in History,
2014: 1–33) observes that, at least in sports history, sociologists have tended
to “take general history as a ‘given’ in the sense of consulting a small number
of well-known secondary works rather than attempting to explore a wider
range of historical works available.” This is not the case with Playing with

Philippine Studies Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 66, NO. 4(2018) 529–45
© Ateneo de Manila University
the Big Boys. Antolihao’s bibliography shows a plethora of secondary sources
and an extensive list of archival materials that were consulted in crafting his
historical narrative. Thus, the book’s interdisciplinary approach combines
abstract sociological theorization with a rigorous historical methodology.
Antolihao’s routine citation of primary source material lends much weight to
his analyses of the sociocultural phenomenon that is Philippine basketball.
A lengthy introduction sets the stage for much of his conceptual
framework. A key focus is the presentation of Philippine basketball as a
phenomenon outside of the common binaries in postcolonial studies. The
usual juxtaposition of the native against the foreign, the colony against the
empire, or the local against the global is transcended by locating Philippine
basketball in local and regional arenas beyond the purview of the country’s
colonial relationship with America. The book’s title, therefore, not only
refers to the struggles of the subaltern Philippines to attain recognition and
growth vis-à-vis its hegemonic colonizer (7), but also sets up a postcolonial
discussion on a nation trying to locate itself both in its immediate locality of
Asia and the world at large.
The rest of the book can be roughly divided into two parts, with a
narrative-based approach slowly giving way to more sociology-based analyses
of current phenomena in the latter segments. The first three chapters deal
with events located further in the past and thus are more historical in nature.
Chapter 1 traces basketball’s obscure origins in Philippine colonial history
and identifies it as one of the many sports introduced by the trifecta of
American colonial forces that brought modern sports into the archipelago
as part of its “civilizing mission”: the American military, the Young Men’s
Christian Association (YMCA), and the public education system. Here,
Antolihao highlights how “physical education and sports were used not only
to mold the body, but the spirit as well” (57). Insightfully, he contrasts the
Spanish conquest through “the sword and the cross” with the efficacy of
American colonial power through “the rifle and the baseball bat” (56–57).
Chapter 2 provides a historical analysis of the battle between ballgames
in the Philippines, as basketball slowly overshadowed baseball in terms of
popularity during the decades of American rule. The discussion includes the
symbolic dichotomy between notions of metropole and province, modernity
and parochialism, bourgeois and populist, that basketball and baseball,
respectively, came to represent. It also showcases the many accomplishments
of different iterations of the national basketball team in international

530
competitions as factors in its final cultural victory over baseball. Strong
finishes in the international arena are also central in Antolihao’s discussion of
Philippine basketball’s subaltern nature since its national teams represented
the former colony’s ability to play with—and even overcome—the “big
boys.” The rush of national pride brought by such achievements propelled
basketball’s transformation into a hegemonic national sporting culture.
Chapter 3 asks how basketball remained popular despite the Philippines’s
dismal performance in international competitions during the latter half of
the twentieth century (118). Titled “The Hollywoodization of Hoops,” the
chapter analyzes the cultural transformation of basketball into an arena of
mass media entertainment, transcending its once international achievements
by catapulting its most famous players into the ranks of national celebrities.
Antolihao observes that “the general emphasis of local basketball during
the late Cold War period had shifted from an externally oriented national
symbol to an inward-looking and self-perpetuating aspect of local popular
culture” (119).
The book shifts gears in chapter 4 with the narrative approaching more
contemporary times. Here, Antolihao discusses basketball’s popularity
through an analysis of spectatorship and further subalternity in the
mass appeal of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) professional
team Barangay Ginebra during the 1990s. He borrows heavily from the
frameworks of Filomeno Aguilar’s analysis of cockfighting as a colonial
pastime and Reynaldo Ileto’s use of popular texts to peer into the world
of mass-based popular movements. The chapter makes use of two popular
songs written by Gary Granada—“Kapag Natatalo ang Ginebra” and “Kapag
Nananalo ang Ginebra”—to unwrap the mentality of the typical Filipino
basketball fan. Antolihao portrays this mentality within the context of the
subaltern but describes it as outside of the colonizer–colonized tension of
Spanish-era cockfighting. Instead, he portrays Philippine basketball as a
subaltern spectacle:

an important arena where the struggles of ordinary people are

symbolically played out. As they root for the underdog, whether
in the arena or in front of television, Filipino basketball followers
are clearly not only cheering for their favorite teams but also for
themselves, and for the many other real underdogs outside the
playing court. (148)

BOOK REVIEWS 531

 Chapter 5 deals with the impact of globalization on Philippine basketball,
focusing on the decline of the PBA due to the increasing popularity of
the US National Basketball Association (NBA), the failure of foreign-
born players to connect with Filipino fans, the rise of the local collegiate
scene, and the continued failure of the national team to win a substantial
international victory (156). The PBA’s decline is evinced by professional and
collegiate league ticket sales, NBA market surveys, and PBA annual revenue
reports. Supporting the narrative are observations of journalists, quotes from
basketball players and personalities, and interviews with long-time fans.
However, despite its adverse effect on the country’s premier professional
league, globalization has not diminished basketball’s popularity in the
Philippines. Antolihao explains the sport’s “cultural embeddedness”:

the immense popularity of basketball is more deeply rooted and

its history as a hegemonic sporting culture goes back more than a
century. . . . Unlike most countries, the mass appeal of basketball
in the Philippines could not be solely attributed to the more recent
surge of globalization, which only became prominent toward the end
of the last millennium. In fact, local basketball is so deeply rooted
that its branches hardly spread out, largely remaining domestically
oriented until today. Philippine basketball runs the court as a mature
national sporting culture; it is ubiquitous, all-pervading. (175)

Ultimately, Antolihao’s use of archival sources and a historical

consciousness enables him to convincingly answer his book’s main
sociological question: why is basketball so popular in the Philippines? His
approach allows him to transcend the simplistic explanation of pervasive
Americanization by narrating the internal dynamic of the sport’s development
in the Philippines. Beginning as a colonial tool to “Americanize the
Filipinos,” basketball was appropriated by Filipinos; international victories
associated it with the nation-state, and “Hollywoodization” entrenched it as
a cultural icon, subsequently becoming symbolically perceived as a “game of
the masses,” whose liking for the game stood firm amid globalization (181–
82). Although primarily sociological, Playing with the Big Boys is a much
welcome addition to Philippine historiography. It is a pioneering work that
delves into the country’s sports history, a field that deserves more recognition
and eagerly awaits further studies by scholars.

532
 Some segments of the book, however, feature abstract concepts without
the citation of primary source materials. While easy to ignore in the book’s
latter portions, where Antolihao deals with facts that can be held as common
knowledge of the average Filipino, such segments attract attention in chapters
dealing with topics that have greater historical distance. An example of this
lapse in documentation is the discussion that pits interscholastic baseball
against collegiate basketball from the 1900s to the 1960s. Although of sound
logical argumentation, the paragraphs that describe the characteristics of
both sports do not feature any citation to specific sources (82–83). Other
examples are his points about Asia’s “Americanization” (105–6) and the
history of Filipino basketball celebrities (111). Nevertheless, these lapses
are minor and do little to detract from the book’s significance. Given its
robust bibliography, conceptual rigor, and tight narrative—not to mention
the game’s ubiquity—Antolihao’s Playing with the Big Boys is a must-read for
scholars interested in Philippine sports history.

Micah Jeiel R. Perez

Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University
<mjperez@ateneo.edu>

BOOK REVIEWS 533