By Cap'n O

JUNE 29, 1998:  Imagine how the world would be if our GIs during World War II hadn't cared about winning the war and beating the goose-stepping Krauts and the nation-raping Japs.

Or imagine what a fun place the U.S. would be if poor, brooding Abe Lincoln, instead of waging an uncompromising war against slavery, decided that winning was bad.

Or what if the civil rights lawyers in the 1950s and 1960s thought that they shouldn't win their lawsuits because battling discrimination was supposed to be "nonresult oriented competition?"

The world would be a mess, and evil would reign supreme.

That's why it's important to teach kids about right and wrong, that they should have the character to fight for what's right and that sometimes winning is everything.

And that's why the people who run the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association should be run out of the country or at least be put in rooms with padded walls. These mental misfits are pushing one of history's dumbest ideas: tournament soccer games with no scores, no winners and no losers.

The idea of "nonresult oriented competition" as it's called is to shelter kids from the alleged trauma and bad feelings that come with losing. Supposedly, the poor, delicate little creatures can't take defeat.

Nonresulted competition is nonsense. Parents who care about their kids should fight it because it will ruin the kids. It'll turn us into a nation of wimps. It wages war against human nature and life.

Everything about life is competition and "result oriented."

When you apply for a job and get it, it means that someone else didn't get the job. You won, and someone else lost. You were chosen probably because you were better than other candidates. That's a result. If you weren't better than the other applicants, you might be in the poor house. You would be the loser.

Once you're on the job everything about it is competitive. You're often battling fellow employees for promotions and raises. You are always battling competitors in the marketplace. If you have an "I don't care, winning isn't everything" attitude, you'll be unemployed.

A CEO who thinks it's OK to lose will ruin the company and put thousands out of work.

Everything in nature is competitive and about winning and losing. If the mighty lion takes down a zebra it has a decent meal. It wins and the zebra loses. If the zebra eludes the lion it wins and lives another day. Everything in nature has a result.

As I said before, winning sometimes is everything. Sometimes there is no substitute for it. Hitler and Hirohito wanted to enslave the world. They were well on their way to doing it. The Austrian madman was butchering millions because they didn't have blond hair and blue eyes and didn't know how to burp on command. Should we have sat back and said, "Winning isn't everything. Let's engage in a nonresult oriented war?"

Had the men and women who waged that war on our behalf been brought up to believe that winning was bad, we'd all be lampshades by now.

Competition is what has made sports so compelling over the centuries. It's what makes life so exciting. Without it, life would be as dull and as meaningless as the Sunday morning news talk shows out of Washington, D.C.

Would we want to watch a basketball game where Michael Jordan, his team down by one with five seconds left, steals the ball, drives down the court, fakes a defender out of his uniform and then refuses to take an open jump shot because he doesn't want to beat the other team and hurt their feelings?

If the people in the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association who are pushing for "nonresult oriented competition" truly believe in it, then they should practice the idea themselves. If they have jobs they should refuse to take pay for their labor. After all, getting paid for work is "result oriented."

But don't look for that to happen.

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