here's a veg, giving free advertisement/support to PETA, Alka knows him

[Guest guest]

(Emil and his entire family is vegetarian, they are

also featured in a PETA press package. sunny)

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/10/22/eguiller\

mo.DTL

 

 

 

 

The Angel Rooting For The Giants

 

Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate Tuesday, October

22, 2002

 

--

 

 

 

Here's one reason to be glad the Giants will be home

this week as they march to World Series dominance.

 

No more Rally Monkey.

 

Will somebody please call PETA and tell them to

protest what could be the most heinous form of animal

exploitation in entertainment since Siegfried met Roy?

 

 

For goodness sake, why, with a team named the Angels,

does Disney feel it must resort to pagan schtick?

 

Me, I'm sticking with your standard Judeo-Christian

form of supernatural. I believe in Da Man. But if he's

too busy with impending war and pestilence to bother

with whether the Giants will win in five, six or

seven, I'll take whatever level of divine intervention

comes my way.

 

So, during this World Series, whenever the Giants are

in trouble or in need of a big run, a big win or just

a well-placed spittoon, I'll once again rely on the

spirits.

 

And I don't mean Jack Daniels.

 

I mean Emiliano ( " Willie " ) Guillermo -- my father, who

art in heaven, the ultimate in upper deck-dom. He's

the angel rooting for the Giants.

 

My dad was a cook, a member of the union, Local 2. You

think Robb Nen throws heat? Not like a fry cook.

 

Born in the Philippines, my dad came to America -- to

San Francisco, not L.A., in the late 1920s. He was

stationed at that old San Francisco landmark,

Bernstein's, the now-defunct restaurant that had a

ship's hull for an entrance jutting out on the Powell

Street sidewalk. When he didn't have on his uniform --

a chef hat and cook's whites -- he had the look of the

fan. Long before Walkmans, he was a transistor man: a

plastic Philco to his ear, a Giants cap on his head.

 

My dad listened to games like they were the only

things that mattered. He had an immigrant's passion

for the game. With its anthem and its heroism, it

symbolized America. And it was a patient pastime.

Listen to the game long enough and good things

happened. While tooling around town on Muni, listening

to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons almost daily, I swear

he practically learned English from their

play-by-play. Baseball English. I know he could have

diagrammed that sentence unique to baseball, " Swung on

and missed. "

 

That was the problem with me and my dad. He was 50

years older than I was. And we missed more often than

we connected.

 

Thank goodness baseball always gave us a context.

 

We played catch out in Golden Gate Park's Panhandle --

an appropriate place, I always thought, for a fry cook

and his son to learn to play ball. And, of course,

we'd ride the Muni ballpark special to Candlestick for

that occasional game where we'd sit in the cheap seats

out in left field and try not to get stuck behind a

pole.

 

Games were hardly ever on TV. There was just the

radio, our surrogate conversation. We never talked.

We'd just keep asking each other, " What's the score? "

 

He would always know. The game was always on. We had a

stake in the Giants and, because of that, in each

other. It was especially great in '62, though we moped

for weeks after McCovey lined out to the Yankees'

Bobby Richardson to end the Giants' first World Series

appearance.

 

But a few years later, not even baseball could save

us. Before I was out of junior high, my father was of

retirement age. I started going to father-son events

alone. My father was old, and that bothered me. At 12,

I was a full-fledged ageist.

 

Our lives drifted like the lines on a baseball

diamond. He was the first-base line, and I was the

third-base line -- connected at home, but a field

apart.

 

But then I learned a little about the history of his

life as a 1920s immigrant. I didn't know about all the

anti-Asian sentiment, including anti-intermarriage

laws that existed at the time. Forbidden by law to

marry anyone outside his race, he was caught up in a

sexual Catch-22. Filipino men, brought over as

laborers, outnumbered Filipino women by 16 to 1. They

were the odd men out. And here I thought he was just

odd socially.

 

But my history lesson set up a reconciliation. And, of

course, baseball was a part of that.

 

I was back from college, June 1978. We did a day game,

my treat. I was wearing a coat and tie so we could

claim the businessman's discount. He was in his Giants

cap and running shoes, and acting rascally -- cutting

in line, wanting to buy the cheap grandstand seats but

planning to sneak down by the dugout.

 

He made me do it!

 

During the game, we enjoyed our passion quietly.

Fancying myself a broadcaster back then, I was doing

the play-by-play in my head. Every now and then, I'd

turn to my dad for a little color. He was involved

with the drama himself, between bites of his homemade

adobo sandwich -- vinegary pork bits on white bread,

tastier than a ballpark frank.

 

The Giants were playing the Phils and fell behind

early. But my dad had no worries. He was confident the

Giants would battle back. When they did exactly that,

all that was left to confirm my dad's predictive

powers was for Vida Blue to put the Phils down in the

ninth. Blue, no longer in his prime and written off by

many as an old man in his 30s, struck out the big

guns, Greg Luzinksi and Mike Schmidt, the heart of the

Phils' batting order, to end the game.

 

My dad had called it. He was Rally Dad!

 

We stood and yelled together in wild appreciation,

which led to our only real meaningful exchange of the

day. Would the Giants get through June and go all the

way?

 

" They'll go all the way, now, " he said.

 

What the heck. At least he had nailed the short-term

prediction. But two hours later, back home, with his

cap still on, watching the highlights of the game on

the early news, my father died before the Giants could

break his heart in September. Hardening of the

arteries, the doctor said. But deep in my heart, I

knew it was pennant fever.

 

As sure as I'm a Giants fan, I can feel it all again.

The games are sold out. But I know he'll be there.

It's the virtue of his current position. He's the

angel rooting for the Giants. He's Rally Dad.

 

Emil Guillermo is a radio and TV commentator and the

author of " Amok: Essays From an Asian American

Perspective, " winner of an American Book Award. "

E-mail: emil

 

 

 

 

 

 

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