Andy Neary recounts a personal baseball anecdote—pitching as an undersized relief pitcher in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, facing a hostile crowd in Missoula, Montana—and uses it as an analogy for employers who feel the odds are stacked against improving health benefits. He frames the talk’s goal as teaching concrete tools and ideas to both improve employee benefits and reduce costs, and urges the audience to leave ready to “shatter the status quo.”
Chapters
Most of you don't know this, but I was fortunate enough to pitch in the Milwaukee brewers organization. Now, when I say that, I often get the. Sure you did. Because when people think about a pitcher in professional baseball, they see someone standing here at 6, 2, I'm in front of you, all of 5, 9, and I weigh 165 pounds right after Thanksgiving. I'll never forget one game in Missoula, Montana. Anybody been in Missoula, Montana? College town, home of the University of Montana. The college students loved attending the games to cheer on the Missoula Osprey, which were affiliates of the Arizona Diamondbacks at the time. So we received fair warning that the crowd drinks a bit too much and they tend to get a bit rowdy. So here we are, it's first game of the series, our starting pitcher is getting shelled. So the call comes down to the bullpen by the third inning. Get Neary up. Get him loose. You see, I was a relief pitcher. I had long relief duties, which meant I came in to replace a starting pitcher having a rough day. And my job was to go four to five innings, keep us in the game. So here I am. I jump up, get loose, get my arms, get my leg loose, grab a ball, I start playing catch. I don't think I had thrown more than 10 pitches at that time. And I'm already running in to the mound into this loud, obnoxious Missoula crowd. Grab the ball from our manager, Dan Norman, and I look in the on deck circle to see who I'm going to be facing. Ah, of course, it's Andres Torres, one of the top prospects in the Diamondbacks organization. See, Andres actually climbed the ranks, and he spent some time with the Arizona Diamondbacks major league club. So now I'm jacked. Here's my chance to make a statement and shut this crowd up. So I start warming up. About three pitches in, crowd starts chanting. By about the sixth pitch, I can hear what they're chanting. How can you pitch when you're 5 foot 6? How can you pitch when you're 5 foot 6? So, no, I was not your protocol. Typical size of a professional baseball pitcher. In fact, most scouts didn't think I had what it took to win at the professional level. Based on my size alone, you could say the odds were stacked against me. And I tell you that story because I look in this audience and I see employers who feel the same way about their health programs, like the odds are stacked against you, and in some way they are. My goal today, however, is to teach you share with you some tools, some ideas to help you not only improve the benefits you provide, but reduce your cost at the same time. If you leave this presentation today still feeling the same way about your benefits, I have absolutely failed. My goal today is have you marching out of this room ready to shatter the status quo that has stood in the way for far too long. Sound good? Yeah. Let's get started.
