Sometimes, losers are the biggest winners, and nice guys, baalei middos tovos, always finish first

Leo Durocher, legendary manager of the old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, famously said, “Nice guys finish last.” Vince Lombardi, the storied coach of the Green Bay Packers football team, had his own famous line: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

Fascinating, you say, but why are these people appearing in a magazine like this? For the answer, stay tuned.

Life, people say, consists of winners and losers. The winners seem to come out on top in everything — business, professions, sports, academia, relationships — while the losers invariably fail to win any prizes. As they say in the sports world, the only thing that matters is the “W column.” We celebrate the winners and remember them, but losers are losers and are relegated to the trash heap and quickly forgotten.

Such is life in the fast lane. But the fast lane can lead to a dead end, and sometimes the losers are the winners, as in the true story of Gershon Kahn.*

Although he was not fully observant, he and I were good friends early in my rabbinate. A brilliant attorney, he was highly intelligent. Perceptive and — most crucial for me as a pulpit rabbi — a loyal and supportive congregant, of which, in those days, there was not an abundance. We studied Torah together and discussed Yiddishkeit, but our friendship was cemented on the tennis court. We were both better than average, and over the years we played many hard-fought matches. Until, that is, Gershon had a mild heart episode, which sidelined him from tennis until further notice.

Several months later, he called and excitedly told me that his doctor had given him the green light to resume tennis. We met on the courts the following Sunday, but it took only a few moments to see that the long layoff had noticeably weakened his game: his timing was off, his sharpness had dulled, he had become very rusty, a mere shell of the fine player he once was. Before the set was half over, and although he was trying very hard, I was already ahead 3-0.

And then it occurred to me that I was being very selfish. So I decided to do what athletes call “take a dive”: I would let him win. But how? He knew my game very well, so I had to be subtle and careful. Gradually, I began deliberately to hit the ball just beyond the back lines and outside the side lines, to misplace my serves, to botch overhead smashes. I discovered that it took as much skill to place the ball two inches outside the line as to hit the line itself. To avoid suspicion, I did win a few points here and there, but before I knew it, Gershon had won the set, 6-4.

He was ecstatic. I could not have given him a better get-well gift. In his joy he called his wife: “I beat him, I beat him!” Neither he nor his wife ever found out that the dive I had taken that day was worthy of an Academy Award.

I lost, but in the joy I had given him, I had won. Better still, I had learned a valuable lesson. For what is it that gives us pleasure when we win anything, when we end up in first place and not as an also-ran? Is it not all a matter of self-regard, of self-validation? I am a champion; I am a somebody. The need to win, to be recognized as the best, is part of our DNA — an essential component of the human ego, and is perfectly natural.

But for a Jew, that which is perfectly natural is not always that which is perfectly Jewish. It is natural to want to take that which is attractive but is not ours; it is natural to cheat, to dissemble, to slander, to covet that which does not belong to us. Being a Jew means to have the strength to say No to oneself, to withdraw and retreat even though every natural impulse pulls the other way and says Yes.

When we overcome our natural instincts and learn to sublimate our baser nature, then we become embodiments of the Mishnah in Avos 4:1: “Eizehu gibbor… — Who is a mighty hero? He who conquers his impulses.” To be a Jew is to be able to step back and surrender our will to a Higher Will.

So is it not only with G-d and Torah, but also with our human and spousal relationships: retreat, regrets, apologies, admission of wrong are all winners. Which, by the way, in this season of repentance, is the essence of teshuvah.

Contra the “gedolim” like Lombardi and Durocher, there is more to life than winning. Sometimes, losers are the biggest winners, and nice guys, baalei middos tovos, always finish first.

*not actual names

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1074)