Taby

By Al S. Mendoza

BACOLOD CITY — I was about to begin writing about my chance encounter here with Mayor Rey Velasco of Sta. Barbara when I heard the news: Taby is dead.

Who is Taby?

Taby is Zacarias M. Tabaniag, an icon in Philippine sports, who was a baseball legend, a pioneer in boxing broadcasting, a top-notch journalist, and a lawyer pro bono, among many feathers in his cap.

Taby died in his sleep on February 27 in his modest home in Makati. He was 88.

Taby wasn’t just my friend.

He was my idol, teacher, second father, role model – and other things too many to mention here.

Taby was ages older than me, but we hit it off the minute we met.

“Do you know that we are cousins?” he said to me.

It was 1977, at Wack Wack, where I was then covering the World Cup of Golf for the Manila Bulletin (I had worked 12 years at Bulletin before I moved to the Inquirer in 1986; I am now with Business Mirror, Abante and Top Gear since 2007, among several other publications).

“How come we are cousins?” I asked him.

“My mother is a Mendoza,” Taby said.

It didn’t matter to him when I said my father (bless his soul) was from Pidigan, Abra.

“Oh, never mind,” Taby said.  “My mother was from Bulacan and somehow, your father and my Mom must be related.”

I was in my ’20s then and Taby was 57.

“From now, let’s call each other ‘insan,’” Taby said.

That’s how it came to be.

In 1990, my father died.  Taby came to the wake. Unannounced.

Standing by the coffin of my father’s, Taby, with his usual booming voice, declared to the packed crowd at the chapel:  “The man lying inside this coffin was a good man.”

Taby had never met my father until that day.

“Do you know why Antonio Bayquen Mendoza was a good man?” he continued.  “It’s because he fathered a son named Alfonso, alias Al.”

I was his favorite, so that when Boy Cantada initiated the revival of the “Fistorama” TV boxing show in 2003, Taby said, “I will only rejoin Fistorama if you put Al Mendoza with me in the TV panel.”

 Taby was a star varsity baseball pitcher, earning athletic scholarships at the University of the Philippines and University of Sto. Tomas for his law degree.

After passing the bar before the outbreak of World War II, Taby, the son of a U.S. Scout, became a guerilla whose field of operations included precarious train rides from Tutuban in Divisoria to Legazpi City in Bicolandia, carrying classified information most of the time about Japanese troop movements towards Bicol.

After the war, he practiced law for free before becoming sports editor of Evening News.  He helped found the Philippine Sportswriters Association in 1949 and soon became its president.

Taby was the country’s No. 1 rules man in golf.

It was to him, next to Jake P. Ayson, that I owe much of my knowledge about my being an international golf rules man today.

At the time of Taby’s death, he was our chairman emeritus in the U-Bix Konica Minolta National Pro-Am Golf championship at The Riviera in Silang, Cavite, on March 4-8.

“It   pains us to learn of Taby’s death,” said U-Bix top honcho Bert Bravo, one of the closest buddies of Tabaniag. “He will be missed and his memory will linger for a long, long while.”

At the time of his death, Tabaniag was writing a well-read sports column at the Manila Standard-TODAY and publishing the Fil-Golf, the first publication about golf matters in the country.

“Taby was a sports icon and his shoes will be hard to fill,” said Rico Agcaoili, the president of the Baguio Country Club.

May Taby’s soul rest in peace.

(Readers may reach columnist at also147@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/general-admission/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)