Andy Neary grew up fat and learned to disappear. When he became a standout baseball pitcher, the spotlight returned his childhood fear of judgment. He never made it in the pros, but realized that blending in means being invisible, while standing out means being seen.
Chapters
When I was a kid, I was fat. And when you're a fat kid, you do not want to be a one-on-one. You just want to be one of many, because one-on-one is, uh, typically negative. When you're a chunky kid, kids pick on you. Girls are definitely not attracted to you. And I was a child of the '80s, so mental health wasn't quite a thing yet. I feared judgment. I feared comparison. I feared failure because all I wanted to do was fit in. There's some good news to this story. When I got to the middle school, I started to grow out of my childhood chubbiness, and I went on to have a lot of success on the baseball field in high school. When you're a standout athlete, you become a one-on-one, and attention finds you. And it was that attention, that feeling of being a one-on-one, that I think gave me the opportunity to go pitch collegiately. But it was pro ball where the fat kid came back, and it wasn't physically this time, it was mentally. It was being measured against others. That's what killed me in pro ball. I, I feared the same judgment, same comparison, same failures I, I did as a fat kid, and it cost me in, in my pro baseball career. And when I look back at that journey from fat kid physically to fat kid mentally in pro ball, there is a very, very clear message, and that is, if you look like everybody else, you will be overlooked. However, if you become a one of one, attention will find you.
