I’m the proudest of the unbelievable Marcial

Today, Willie Marcial is the PBA commissioner, the loftiest position in the country’s No. 1 sports entertainment since the league’s inception in 1975

Willie Marcial is proof that hard work backstopped by farmer-patience is still very much alive in this now highly-competitive world of razzle-dazzle.

You don’t have an iPhone and you are jurassic.

You still say “I have a date tonight” instead of “I have a gig tonight,” you are guilty of clinging to the “hello” crowd and “haller” is as Greek to you as “ganern.”

Willie Marcial is all that. Meaning, he does not speak Steve Jobs stuff, nor Vice Ganda’s “hay, naku!” spook.

Willie sticks strictly to things, habits, he grew up with. And, surely, that has put him in good stead through all these years.

Merely tagging along with his boyhood buddies from Project 6 Q.C. who were statisticians at the then infant Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), Willie Marcial learned the trade so quickly that “The Chief” would have him hired full-time “without delay.”

“Mr. Fred Luarca ‘The Chief’ made me a statistician and that was my first big break in the PBA,” said Willie. “That was in 1984—years after I was a mere sabit, consistently, to my friends like Quintana and Mr. Luarca’s nephew who were already statisticians and loved to bring me along to the games.”

Today, Willie Marcial is the PBA commissioner, the loftiest position in the country’s No. 1 sports entertainment since the league’s inception in 1975.

“Biglang nahulog sa tapat ko (suddenly, it was there),” he said to me, referring to his new job. “I believe it was heaven-sent.”

From many of Willie’s well-wishers, I feel I am the proudest of them all.

Reason? I had worked with Willie when he was promoted to floor director when Vintage Enterprises of the late Bobong Velez became the games’ coveror in the 80s.

I was then a regular Vintage radio analyst for many years, doing some TV color on the side from time to time. Ah, the days Willie and I had worked together were some of the most memorable in my life.

At 56 and after working 34 straight years in the PBA, including stints as the league’s media officer and an assistant to the commissioner, Willie Marcial, the biggest underdog of them all, is now the biggest banana in the PBA.

Indeed, fairy tales can still come true.