You may recall a story like that from Dan Jenkins' football novel, Semi-Tough. (Made into an okay movie.)  The story is reportedly based on actual behavior of Howie Long when he was playing for the Oakland Raiders. You now see a mild-mannered, pleasant Howie on the Sunday morning football show on FOX. That is not the Howie teammates and opponents saw on the field. There, they saw and encountered a man who hated to lose.  In his newest novel, about the LPGA, The Franchise Babe, Jenkins again talks about the hate-to-lose element. I find fewer and fewer people exhibiting this. In pro sports. In business. Most are all too willing to accept losing and losses, to shrug them off, to end days without productive accomplishment, to miss sales, to let revenue escape, to let customers disappear, to bank excuses instead of money. And as I have said before, you get what you accept.

 

I have always hated not doing well. Hate is, or is supposed to be a very strong word. Hate is dark and violent and intense.  I mean it that way. I hate not doing well.  People interfering with my ability to do well, through negligence, incompetence, stupidity, have seen and felt my wrath.  Like Howie, I have actually, physically injured myself - smashing fist into wall, steel file cabinet; kicking car fender repeatedly; etc. -  in unchecked rage after screwing up badly.

 

When I set out in the A.M. with a To-Do List, I resist with every fiber of being, carrying an item on it over to the next day. I hate that.  When advertising, marketing or sales campaigns are slowed or sabotaged by peoples' sloppy or careless implementation, I immediately begin scheming to rid my life of the culprits. I hate people who don't hate things being f'd up.  I approve of the Oriental tradition of falling on one's own sword when performing badly. By normal standards, I suppose I am emotionally unstable or dysfunctional, and might be diagnosed as mentally ill, but then normal standards lead to normal results, which suck.  By the way, every doctor always expects me to have high blood pressure. I do not. I cause high blood pressure, I don't have it.  Seems to me, if you don't care deeply, passionately about getting whatever you're doing right, done fast and on time, done in the way that produces best results,  you ought to find something worth caring about to do - or find a way to do nothing at all. If I had a team, I'd much rather have a Howie Long, and have to pry the damaged locker door from his hands and talk him out of the depths of rage, despair and depression over losing, than have a modern-day, laissez-faire, stuff happens, we'll try to do better next time wimpus and struggle to talk him into performing.  When I look around the ranks of the rich, I see people like me who hate losing. When I look around everywhere else, I see loads of good losers.

 

At the moment, a lot of willing-to-accept-not-doing-well folks have been handed an extra supply of excuses - gas prices, real estate slump, Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, etc. - and many are unconsciously delighted to have them.  Be careful. Their mental illness is contagious.