Heart and Sol

Follow the leader
(Photo courtesy of Sports5)

There are hundreds, nay, thousands of approaches to the sport of Chess. Some prefer to attack early, others, to lie in wait while a few choose to read the person seated before them. One strategy is to allow your offensive pieces to do the brunt of the dirty work, to have your Pawns, Bishops, Knights and Rooks wreak havoc before unleashing the Queen as your ultimate closer.

Think of the GlobalPort Batang Pier, now carrying an unexpected 4-3 winning card in the PBA Philippine Cup, as something of the sort. While neophyte scoring prodigy Terrence Romeo and “buddy” Ryan Roose Garcia earn praises and headlines with their high-level offense and PBA-ready game, when the games are tight and the chips are down—that’s when we see who the team’s real “anchors” are on both ends of the floor: the Fil-Am veteran pair of Jay Washington and Sol Mercado.

As though he was trying to prove his doubters wrong and negate the last few years with Petron Blaze, Washington has been on a complete tear averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds a game for the Batang Pier. Not far behind is Mercado, who is putting up an impressive 19 points and close to 5 rebounds and 5 assists a night which is reminiscent of his near-MVP run/form with the Meralco Bolts not too long ago.

With teams already gearing up for Romeo and Garcia’s exploits, the responsibility of carrying the Batang Pier onwards and seeing their Playoff chances through falls on the shoulders of its veterans. In chess, when the minor pieces have served their purpose (whatever it may be) that's when the Queen is sent out for the kill (again, in some cases only, depends on the overall approach). Traditionally, you don't have your Queen doing all the work while the pieces wait for their marching orders.

Nay, it's almost always the other way around. And when push came to shove (in the last few games wherein Romeo was checked), that's when Mercado and Washington came through.

After what Washington went through with the whole “Petronovela” phase in his career, we can’t say we blame him for just choosing to tune out the semantics and simply working his ass off for his new team.

As for Mercado, when his body is in the right, he’s arguably the most unstoppable force among all point (daresay even shooting) guards in the PBA.