Blue Babble, Gang Green: The Ateneo-La Salle Rivalry

By RJ Ledesma

This book on Ateneo and De La Salle—two of Manila's top universities—is, overall, a thoughtful and honest collection of insights about one of the most storied rivalries that goes beyond school basketball courts during college-ball season. In true form, author RJ ledesma tells of little stories (if not known facts) about what might have started and has continuously fueled the friendly fire between the two schools.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712730405

Book preview

BLUE BABBLE,

GANG GREEN

The Ateneo–La Salle Rivalry

RJ Ledesma

Blue Babble, Gang Green

The Ateneo–La Salle Rivalry

By RJ Ledesma

Copyright to this digital edition © 2014 by

RJ Ledesma and Anvil Publishing, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owners.

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Cover art and design by Gabi Dimaranan

ISBN 9789712730405 (e-book)

Version 1.0.1

Contents

Foreword

When RJ writes he makes it so easy for people to love his sense of humor. He can disarm anyone with his style of communicating. More often than not, his insights and humor allow us to move beyond our own biases and prejudices so that we can understand ourselves better as human beings.

This collection of essays can be entertaining and witty yet perceptive and intuitive in describing the rivalry between La Salle and Ateneo. among other things. In this collection of essays, I can describe them like what William Shakespeare expressed in King Lear (1608): Jesters do oft prove prophets (V, iii, 73), often literally translated as many a true word is spoken in jest.

Br. Ricky P. Laguda FSC

General Councillor

De La Salle Brothers

University of St. La Salle Bacolod High School, 1987

Ateneo de Manila University AB Philosophy, 1992

De La Salle University President and Chancellor, 2012–2014

Foreword

I have always wondered whether this rivalry was of any good for us, really. Rivalry, as Girard tells us, is what leads to violence. And that, we already have too much of these days. And so perhaps the question to ask is: Could it be that all of RJ’s comically extensive reflections on this rivalry of eagles and archers is but the rationalization of something that we will really be better off without?

At its worst, this rivalry made us into real enemies. We were conditioned to seethe and curse and want to hurt somebody at the sight of a sea of either blue or green. Images of parking lot violence after a basketball game, or many a friendly party gone bad with fistfights and whatnot echo from stories told of the seventies and eighties when the rivalry was rabid. While we can be thankful times have changed and the animosity perhaps is now less physically hurtful, the slandering, the putdowns, the insults, the curses (and now the occasional cyber bullying) remain.

Rumor has it that this rivalry all started with a few FSC brothers and Jesuit Fathers (who were actually friends living in the same seminary house) imagining ways to make life more exciting and challenging for their students. In short, they were bored, and so like the Greek gods decided to stir up a commotion among their subjects. (To find out whether or not this is true, you’ll have to read the rest of the book.) If this were so, then we’ve been duped into a senseless construct of enemy-hood, haven’t we? Is it time to drop the illusion, then?

By his columns and in this book, RJ has shown us that there is more to it than just us having become enemies. There is sportsmanship and learning a genuine respect for the opponent and an admiration of his or her strengths. There is learning to help each other in times of great need. There is working together toward bigger goals, like the country and building it up for the poor, the downtrodden and the calamity-stricken. There is the discovery that we are not too different at our roots after all, with spiritualities of service and being men and women for others at both our cores. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we have learned to like each other, I would say, that perhaps there is something greater that has manifest in all of the above. In the ways we have grown to honor each other and learned to play fair, in how we have cooperated to build the nation together and worked for the common good, in the ways we have helped each other get up after a fall and learn from each other’s strengths—perhaps there is a greater something there.

And if indeed there is something there, then perhaps this rivalry has become the ground on which we have learned to take on Jesus’ most difficult, most incomprehensible, most counter-intuitive of commands. And if only for this then maybe we can remain enemies after all, RJ, so that we can keep learning to love the way Jesus taught us and did. If for this alone, then this rivalry might just all be worth it.

Rev. Mark L. Lopez, SJ

Former editor-in-chief of

The Windhover: The Philippine Jesuit Magazine

LSGH GS ’88 HS ‘92

ADMU BS Management Engineering ‘96

PREFACE

The