Happy Birthday, Alfredo “Fredo” Enriquez ( July 20 )

Happy Birthday, Alfredo “Fredo” Enriquez

Source : Assorted Magazines (PBA Archives Collections)

PBA pioneer
5-season PBA veteran 
2-team PBA player 
University of San Jose Recoletos guard

Toyota Coach Dante Silverio once referred to him as "my kind of a ballplayer." Elucidating, Dante said he's the sort of a player who goes all out all the way: one who if I am to ask him to give 100 per cent in a game will try to give me at least 150 per cent of his effort." Another Francis Arnaiz? A new Sonny Jaworski? A tireless, errorfree Oscar Rocha? Surprisingly, the player over whom Dante bubbled over is not even a member of the Toyota ballclub, or one who has been recruited by the Tams to play with them in the next series of the PBA. He is hold your breath now, Freddie Enriquez, the springy, daring spitfire of the Seven-Up Uncolas; a man who if he had been a pilot instead of a basketball player probably won't have any trouble making the "kamikaze" squadron. Although not as well built as Presto's Ernesto Morales or Royal's Yoyong Martirez, Enriquez is to Seven-Up what Morales is to Presto and Martirez to the Orangemen the sparkplug. He is a ballplayer who darts in and out of tight situations, breaks up the pattern of the opposing team's defense, touches off fast break plays and all but breaks his neck in the performance of his assignment. His is not an enviable job, but take it from Freddie Enriquez, the as he put it guy is actually "having a ball performing my high wire act on the hardcourt." "I love to do it," he said, "because it's the only thing I can do not being tall or a good shooter."  But what he lacks in height and firepower, Enriquez more than makes up with his speed, and as to how he acquired this, he points with pride to his stint as a sprinter on the track contingent of the Colegio de San Juan Recoletos of Cebu where he studied. Enriquez said he first broke into local bigtime basketball when he was recruited for the Seven-Up team in the 1972 MICAA. From Seven-Up he moved to Mariwasa the following year, but the year after that he was back at SevenUp. say "So I guess," he said, "you might I am a dyed-in-the-wool Uncola." With the kind of a game that her plays, one would expect Enriquez to bear the usual scars of a hardcourt daredevil like torn ligaments, fractured ankles and bumps on the head but surprisingly, all that Enriquez has to show for the kind of a life that he lives on the hardcourt is nothing more than the memory of an ankle sprain. "And it didn't even sideline me for long," he said. So how does he avoid getting maimed or ripped apart by his reckless style of playing?