Thomas J. Wingate had a tattoo on his arm that read "Born to Lose," though I don't remember where that tattoo was or what it looked like. He might as well have had it etched onto his liver or intestines, however—that's how deeply the feeling was ingrained in him. 

Who had done this ingraining, if not for the man himself, I can't presume. I usually believe that our deepest ingrainings are done by ourselves, messages that may perhaps be written over some original text left by another, such as 

you suck  
you're worthless  
you're a nobody  

but are nonetheless written and rewritten in our own hand. Obsessively, without remorse for what a crime against the self it may be to take a single judgment and render it permanent. 

I think of my father's "Born to Lose" and wonder if he tattooed it himself in prison, using a needle and the ink from a pen as I'd heard bored prisoners do. He'd have to go over the lines of those letters time and again, met aphorizing and making permanent the process of ingraining his belief in his own loser-dom onto his own flesh. 

Of course it trickled down. Having a man who was "Born to Lose" at the head of a family implies that 

we suck
we're worthless
we're nobodies

and it seemed like we were never going to win. Because we'd already decided, before we stepped out onto the field, that the odds were against us.

Which I'm okay with, actually. I personally thrive on the odds being against me—it's my permanent state of being. It makes me fight not necessarily harder, but longer and more patiently. 

If only I could go back in time and give my dad a dose of my assiduousness. Go back in time and show him that losing isn't the only option when the odds are against you. 

"It's just taking the easy way out, Dad," I want to tell him. "Can't you see?"