“You’ve got to accentuate the positive…”
Dateline: T-Bend
“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
~Winston Churchill
If you don’t believe you will win, you won’t.
All wins don’t take place on the field, don’t take place on the scoreboard, all wins take place in your heart.
Attitude is the universal playing field.
Be it work.
Be it school.
Be it sports.
Or life.
Attitude fuels success.
It’s how small 5 foot, 8 inch NFL running back Barry Sanders never had a rushing season under 1,000 yards in his 10-year Hall of Fame career.
In high school Michael Jordan was told he was too short to play basketball, the varsity team list without his name on it fueled his attitude throughout his hoops career.
Every strike brought the Babe, “closer to my next home run.” I have that quote framed at home.
I hear people’s criticism, I hear it but I never listen to it.
I’m a swing for the fence kind of guy.
Attitude.
Deal with it.
“…eliminate the negative…”
“If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”
~Vince Lombardi
Dean Rojas and I are at some fancy resort joint on Toledo Bend having dinner, both of us ordered chicken fried steak, which is possibly my first time eating what in fact turned out to be a fried concoction that was neither “chicken” or “steak.”
Currently I’m eating the whip cream off the very good blueberry New York cheesecake, across from me Dean is seemingly pretty happy with his strawberry New York cheesecake.
This is not the first time I’ve written notes down with whipped cream schmutz on one of my knuckles.
Dean has a rather large strawberry speared on a fork and right before he somehow manages to get the whole fruit in his mouth he says this, “You know one night I made $340 dollars selling cotton candy.”
“What?”
“mumble mumble mumble lick mumble lick mumble,” which is exactly what an answer to a question sounds like with a large strawberry in your mouth.
I put my pen down and wait until the chewing stops…
“…yeah, um good, yeah I worked at The Murph, Jack Murphy stadium in my hometown of San Diego from the time I was 16 until around 24…”
“…blue or pink…”
Dean just looks at me…
“…blue or pink cotton candy, which one did you sell the most of…”
“…um…”
Come on man, to someone like me that question is just as important as how much did the fish weigh.
“I don’t remember db, but I did make the front page of USA TODAY, a photo of me selling cotton candy at The Murph.”
Sorry if these details bother you but I have never in 35 years had the chance to interview a stadium cotton candy seller:
“There is a hierarchy to the whole thing db, I started selling soda, the lowest level of seniority, 24 cups, very heavy, moved up one level to the hot dogs but sometimes you would burn your legs, you were basically carrying a furnace around, moved up to popcorn, then peanuts and Cracker Jacks, finally the top level, cotton candy. It was light, the kids came to you and after a certain dollar amount I would get 20 percent commission of whatever I sold, normally averaged $70-$100 an event.”
During his 9 years hawking and working the concrete steps of The Murph he saw, “…the Rolling Stones, all of Tony Gwynn’s career, all the football games, stood 5 feet away from Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, was behind home plate when Roseanne Barr butchered the national anthem, made the front page of the USA TODAY sports section, a color photo of me holding my tray of cotton candy in 1993.”
“Blue or pink…”
“…and latch on to the affirmative…”
Turns out it was the perfect job for Dean in more ways than being up to your neck in cotton candy, “I worked basically from 5 p.m. until around 9:30 p.m., I could fish all day and still make good money.”
Plus, “It also taught me how to talk in front of people, not be shy in front of large crowds, which still helps when I take to the Bassmaster stage.”
And being on that Bassmaster stage is something Dean does a lot. For those of you who know me you know I don’t do math, ‘cept this having a positive attitude seems to be working for Dean, dig these stats:
In 196 events he has been in the money 135 times (in baseball that would be a .689 batting average), 99 top 30s, 14 Bassmaster Classics, the last four times he fished here on T-Bend he came in 38th (2012), sixth (2014) and won it in 2011 and 2001.
And get this, Dean averages, AVERAGES winnings of $9,920 for every tournament he’s ever been in.
Okay, ‘nuff with the numbers, I’m not used to typing way over there on the right side of the keyboard and it’s slowing me down, but if you ask me that’s pretty much the dollar and cents of a positive attitude.
“…you’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum…”
To those of you out there longing to be a “journalist,” or those in the biz watching the industry crumble around you, one little piece of advice, put down your pen and pick up a fork.
The dinner table, it turns out, is the greatest “LIVE” shot you’ve got.
Breaking bread can also lead to breaking news.
When I do these dinner-with things I go in with one thought, one question and then just freestyle the rest of the deal, it’s an organic interview.
As I’m about to reach across the table and scoop up some of Dean’s whipped cream, this happens:
“Early on in life I used to be a pretty negative person, had a lot of animosity, mad a lot, I couldn’t let it go, negativity is like a cancer, it just grows and spreads, just grows and spreads, db.”
I poke a blueberry, dip it in what’s left of my whipped cream, pop it in my mouth and listen.
“It’s hard work to have and keep a positive attitude you know.”
I just smile, I’m pretty positive around whipped cream.
“I spun out a lot back then…”
“When?”
“When I was young…”
“Huh…”
“…db you know, growing up wasn’t so good, my childhood, you know…”
And I stopped eating whipped cream.
“…bring gloom down to the minimum…”
“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”
— Willie Nelson
I am the problem child, of problem parents.
Those of you out there like me know exactly what I’m saying.
Dinner took a sudden left turn and it became apparent that Dean’s childhood and mine were very similar.
We talked for an hour about it, I’m only going to say this about it, he was born on Long Island and moved to San Diego when he was three-and-a-half, “I’m second generation immigrant to this country, my father was from Columbia, my mother was from Germany.”
Dad was an engineer, worked on the B1 Bomber and F-16, Mom was a stay-at-home mother.
That’s all I’m saying about Dean’s childhood except that in school, “I wasn’t popular in high school, I was the minority, I was into fishing and carried around fishing magazines and was teased unmercifully.”
Neither Dean nor I had a “Leave It To Beaver” life. Neither raised by Ozzie or Harriet.
If those examples pre-date you, trust me, we only saw the Walton’s on TV.
Dean is wiping the corner of his eye, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe a bug flew into it, but I’m also wiping the corner of my eye and there is no bug in there.
I was the problem child, of problem parents.
I was punched, slapped, sliced and hit in the back of the head with a frying pan.
I was not yet 12 years old.
I’ll take 90 percent of the blame for all that, I was a child, but I was a tough raise, but 10 percent is on her.
My mother.
Never in my life called her, Mom, can’t get myself to call her that to this day.
She was Mother, she died a decade or so ago, I don’t miss her.
I was at ESPN when she was put into a hospice kind of thing in Florida, after a week or so I called to see how she was doing, they wouldn’t tell me, wouldn’t put me through, told me she never mentioned she had a son, had to have my sister call and tell them she did and it was alright to tell me things.
I never called back.
God’s honest true story.
While we are on this God’s honest thing, I have to say, Mother haunts me everyday of my life.
Told me I was dumb.
Told me I would never be anything.
Was the most negative person I’ve ever met in life.
I told Dean all that.
“Yep,” was all he said that I’ll print.
Those of you who’ve been through it, know what I mean.
Hang in there.
“…have faith or pandemonium’s…”
“Negativity can suck you in, I don’t really want to hang around people who talk negative, don’t want to hear about the fish you didn’t catch, don’t want to hear about the negative, can’t chance being sucked back in.”
When I was 14 I was walking down a neighborhood street when a carload of guys pulled up and “jumped” me. One took out a knife and cut off a bunch of my hair, one broke my arm, one broke my nose and when they were done kicking me while I laid on the ground they picked me up and threw me inside a restaurant dumpster.
I laid amongst the wilted lettuce and mashed potatoes crying.
I went in as a child, I crawled out an angry punk. In the next couple years or so I joined a gang, rose to the leadership and sought out and doubled the payback on the dumpster boys.
I was out of the house at 17 and very, very negative, not to mention, dangerous.
“db I did get calmer, started not spinning out, not going negative, not being PO’ed all the time…”
“Why…”
“Got older, and you know, met, Renee…”
And once again it seems a bug flew in his eye.
“…liable to walk upon the scene…”
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
~ John Wooden
Renee is his wife of 20 years, “She’s my savior, she keeps me positive, she’s a kind positive person, best thing that ever happened to me.”
My savior is named, Barb, my father used to call her, “My angel for saving my son,” and while I argued a bunch with my father, I’ll give him that statement.
Dean has two sons, Cameron, 16, and Austin, 14.
Cameron wants to be a pilot, “Flies now with the Civil Air Patrol, wants to go to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, wants to someday fly the B-52, wants to fly the biggest fastest thing possible.”
“What do you tell him about that?”
“I tell him, tell both kids, you got one shot at life, go chase it, focus all your energy, resources and hard work at your goal and it can happen, can happen, look at me, I’m the luckiest guy alive, I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do all my life.”
Barb tells our children that as well, to be honest, I’m sometimes lost as a parent, demons you know.
I don’t do well when bullied, be it subtle or overt, don’t handle meanness well either, “Dean I think the world may be getting meaner, TV is getting meaner, news is getting meaner, comments are getting meaner.”
“Don’t fall for it.”
“I don’t, I tell Barb, maybe the kids as well, ‘it’s easier to be nice then it is to be mean,’ I’m getting better, maybe 80/20 nice.”
Dean just smiles.
Dean is positive.
This is the last thing I say to Dean, we are now even closer friends, I say this:
Me: “Dude, I think a positive attitude is the little voice in your head that whispers to you…”
And I couldn’t finish it past that, we both knew the rest of that sentence.
It’s the voice that tells you, “you can,” when others say you can’t.
It’s the voice that says, “you’re not,” when others say you are stupid.
It’s the voice that whispers when others scream.
For those of you out there who know what I mean, this story is for you.
Listen to that voice inside of you.
Not the screams.
The screams, are lying.
Trust me on that one.
“…you got to ac (yes, yes) -cent-tchu-ate the positive.”
Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive
Johnny Mercer
db
“Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I’m going to complete every pass.”
~ Ron Jaworski