Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball

Hoops dreams in the Philippines-a fresh and unforgettable basketball diary of one man's journey and one nation's passion.

Welcome to the Philippines, where the men are 5'4," the everyman's Air Jordans are a pair of flip-flops, and the rhythm of life is punctuated by the bouncing of a basketball...

Allured by the idea of an island nation full of people who love the game as irrationally as he does, American journalist Rafe Bartholomew arrived in Manila to unlock the riddle of basketball's grip on the Philippines. On his unforgettable journey, Bartholomew spends a season inside the locker room of a Philippine professional team, dines with politicians who exploit hoops for electoral success, travels with a troupe of midgets and transsexuals who play exhibition games at rural fiestas, and even acts in a local soap opera. Sweating his way through hard-fought games of 3-on-3, played with homemade hoops for 50-cent wagers, Bartholomew uses a mix of journalistic knowhow and the hard-court ethics he learned from his dad to get in the paint and behind the scenes of Filipinos' against-all-odds devotion to the sport.

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James McBride, Author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung
Rick Telander, Senior Sports Columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Author of Heaven is a Playground
Alex Kotlowitz, Author of There are no Children Here and The Other Side of the River
Bethlehem Shoals, Author of FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac
Rafe Bartholomew is an assistant editor at Harper's Magazine. He received his master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism before traveling to the Philippines as a U.S. Fulbright scholar in 2005, when he first studied basketball's role in the country. His articles have been featured in The New York Times, Seattle Weekly, Detroit Free Press, and Slate, among other publications. He has been honored for his sports writing by the Society of Professional Journalists and in The Best American Sports Writing 2007. In October 2008, he returned to New York City after three years in Manila.

Rafe Bartholomew is an assistant editor at Harper's magazine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Seattle Weekly, Detroit Free Press, and The Best American Sports Writing 2007. He currently lives in New York.