Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:52
Yeah, there’s a lot of a story behind each one of those being let go. Right. The next piece, you know, is leadership. I know you talk about leadership. I’ve heard you talk about the World Series team.
So we’ll talk about that because that was not like, oh, they’re a shoo in right. At all. So talk about leadership and why not more what that means.
Ryan Lavarnway 17:23
Yeah. To me, leadership is about encouraging people to be their best and empowering them to be their best. I have two stories I want to tell. One was from college. You know, now that I had come out of high school and really started believing in the why not me concept and that mantra of I can be the person that makes the change, the person that is the best player.
I started setting goals for myself, knowing that I could achieve them, and I had a very average freshman year of college. I got to play, which is great, but I wasn’t anything special. And I saw our first baseman get awarded all Ivy League award. I mean, like parades, bells are going off in my head. I’m like, oh man, I can if I set my mind to it, I know I can achieve that goal.
But like, I saw your face right there, Jeremy. And anybody listening, like all Ivy League, you’re probably thinking, whoopty-doo, right? Nobody cares. Right.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:25
I mean, I think it’s a hard sport, but I think they Ivy League has a reputation of, you know, not being the best competition out. Like when you talk about Southern California high school baseball I envision the cream of the crop. Right. Yeah.
Ryan Lavarnway 18:42
So, so and that’s exactly my point.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:43
Now I’ve played against Division three athletes and they smoke everyone. So I don’t have that.
Ryan Lavarnway 18:50
So my point is that I, I thought I had this incredible goal after seeing a teammate who was, you know, a role model of mine. And I said, that’s going to be my goal. And I talked to our hitting coach about it, and he is the one that raised the bar for me. And he said, why not more? Why would you set your goal at all?
Ivy League when you can win All-American and now all American? There’s some recognition there. Now this is something worth actually doing. And the thing about setting a goal higher is when you set it a little bit out of reach, where you have to change what you do and who you are to embody the person that deserves that goal. That’s exactly what happens is you up your game, you up the level, the quality of who you are and what you do.
So I changed everything. I ended up finding a weight vest and wearing it under my clothes. Every second I was awake, I was in the batting cage. I wasn’t hitting baseballs anymore. I was hitting volleyballs because they were heavier.
And now I’m getting stronger through contact, right? I kept being the hardest worker, but I upped everything I did in my focus. And that very next year, I was the first All-American baseball player at Yale in 25 years. And so I think about that. Coach raised the level of what I thought was possible, and if he hadn’t done that, I’m confident I would have won all Ivy League. But not all American.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:17
Made you think bigger. Yeah. You said there was a couple stories.
Ryan Lavarnway 20:21
Yeah, the other story in the big leagues. And this is great leadership. A lot of times leadership has to happen through tough conversations. And I want to call out Terry Francona, who is my favorite manager in the big leagues that I ever had. He was sending me down.
You know, he was my first manager in the big leagues with the Red Sox. He was also my last manager in the big leagues with the Cleveland Indians at the time, and I wasn’t going to make the team out of spring training. He called me into his office when they said, hey, the manager wants to talk to you. I knew what the conversation was going to be, right? I had been sent down plenty of times.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:56
Never a good, never a good sign.
Ryan Lavarnway 20:58
It’s not good when the club is like, hey, Skipper wants to talk to you. Sorry. You walk into the office, you know what he’s going to say. And as he says, hey, Barney, we got to make a move. He’s got this deep, burly voice.
I try to make it easy on him. Right? I’m a pro, I get it. I’m going to go to Triple-A. Work my butt off. I’ll see you soon. And he says to me in that moment where he’s having the hard conversation that he knows I don’t want to hear. He still takes the time to inspire me, he says. Ryan. Sometimes being a really good self-evaluator doesn’t serve you.
Sometimes you got to be just dumb enough to think you’re better than you are, and then you live up to that expectation.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 21:45
One of my favorite stories is about the Boston Red Sox World Series team. And I’ve heard you talk about a couple things. And one of the things was there were some veterans that came on, and that’s what I think of when I’m thinking of the leadership. Can you talk about the influence of that and a little bit of the backstory behind that?
Ryan Lavarnway 22:12
Yeah. So I think about that as teamwork and peer leadership and peer leadership can be just as impactful, if not more, than leadership from someone in a position of authority. Peer leadership is when the expectation is so high, you either get on the boat or you get off the boat, right? That Boston Red Sox World Series team was not the best team in the league that year. Objectively, we were not the best team in the American League.
We shouldn’t have even made it to the World Series. That was the Detroit Tigers year to win in their starting rotation. The Tigers had five people that ended up winning Cy Youngs. They had three of the best hitters on the planet at the time, including Miguel Cabrera, who’s the best right-handed hitter of our generation. So the Tigers should have won.
But starting from day one of spring training, we started talking about our goal as a Red Sox team. We had lost 97 games the year before. And the Boston writers, who are not always friendly. They called us an unmitigated disaster. The new players we brought in were not necessarily all-stars.
We brought in guys that were clubhouse guys. So when I introduced myself to Johnny Gomez in spring training, he says, hey, how you doing? We’re one day closer to the World Series parade, and we start talking about our goals when we’re in first place in the first month of the season. They say that manual scoreboard at Fenway Park on the monster. You don’t need to manually move the things anymore.
Just paint Boston in first place because no one’s coming for us. And we spoke into existence. We talked about our goals, and we embodied the things we wanted so much that get on the boat or get off the boat. We’re pulling the rope in the same direction and everyone’s pulling. And if you’re not pulling with us, then get out. Walk out the door.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 24:07
And then, you know, I know that you’ve talked about. Why not us? Can you talk about that for a second?
Ryan Lavarnway 24:14
Yeah, that’s kind of the collective chip-on-chip on our shoulder, right? You know, all of my mindset things talk about leaning into possibility and being curious. I believe that sometimes we focus on the goal, but we don’t focus on the hurdle. But I think there’s power in recognizing the things that could stop you. What could trip you up?
What are the reasons that you might not get your goal? And if you see them clearly and you inspect them, then you can find a way to overcome it. You can find a way to get around it. So the why not us mindset really comes into why not us? Like what?
What is going to stop us? And if it’s not a real thing, we can overcome it together and pull on that same rope in the same direction. The possibility that us as a group, all of us aiming in the same direction, we can be stronger than we ever could be. Some of our parts.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:11
From that season. The 2013 World Series season. What was the highlight for you if you look back.
Ryan Lavarnway 25:21
Man, I mean, the lowlight certainly was the bombing that year in Boston. And, you know, the city that went through so much and it showed so much resiliency. I think one of the highlights is the way that as a team, we really put that on our shoulders and said, we’re going to go out every day and play for the city. I think there’s a civic responsibility that athletes and teams have the opportunity to take on, and that team embodied that civic responsibility in a way that I’ve never experienced before.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:52
One of the things you wanted to do was play with Team USA in the Olympics. Talk about that journey for a second.
Ryan Lavarnway 26:04
Wow. So the Olympics, I mean, the pinnacle of athletic competition in sport in general, but for baseball. Baseball hadn’t been in the Olympics in 12 years, so that was a dream I never even thought to have. Door was closed. The World Baseball Classic is the pinnacle of international competition for baseball.
And, you know, I was the quintessential 26th man on every 25-man roster. So chances that team USA was interested in me were very low. But Team Israel came along and asked me to play for Israel. So in 2016, the first year in six years that I wasn’t in the big leagues for the qualifying tournament, I played for Israel and helped Israel qualify to make the World Baseball Classic for the first time. And even though going in, I had very little ties to my own Judaism, very little ties to Israel at all, or no ties to Israel.
Playing for Israel, it really changed my life. It helped me find my community. It helped me find my place, my own Judaism, my own spiritual identity. So fast forward a few years. Team USA did recruit me to play for USA in the Olympics, and I actually chose to play for Israel instead.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:24
Who are some of the teammates on Team Israel that you remember?
Ryan Lavarnway 27:29
I have tons of teammates. We had Josh Zeid, who ended up being my best friend for a few years. Ian Kinsler, the Texas Rangers Hall of Famer. Danny Valencia, a very, very good player in the big leagues. Mitch Glasser played in the minor leagues for a couple of years. Tons of guys.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:48
What did that team. You had some success, though, with Team Israel?
Ryan Lavarnway 27:53
Yes. That’s another example of why not us? Because nobody had any expectations for Team Israel. I mean, they did. The expectations were very low, actually.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 28:01
I think you talked about how there’s like one baseball field in all of Israel at some point. There was.
Ryan Lavarnway 28:06
Yeah, in 2016, there was one baseball field in the whole country and Israel was ranked 42nd in the world rankings. And those world rankings encompass all ages. So it’s eight and up, 10 or 8 and under ten and under 12 and under 14, all the way up to the senior national team. That’s 23 and up. There was only 250 players combined of all ages playing in the country.
When I first started playing for them, since then, our tournament winnings have made over $3 million that we’ve donated and built three more fields in the country, so participation has increased greatly. But they were calling us the Jamaican bobsled team of baseball. They said that we made up the roster of the Bad News Bears that had no business being in the tournament. And we leaned into that why not us attitude, that collective chip on our shoulder. And in the World Baseball Classic in 2017, we ended up beating Korea.
We ended up beating Chinese Taipei. We beat the Netherlands and we beat Cuba, who was ranked third, fourth, sixth and 12th in the world, coming from the country ranked 42nd.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:20
When you look back at that, you’d think that’d be impossible, right?
Ryan Lavarnway 29:25
It should have been impossible.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:26
How so? If you look at, I don’t know, let’s take Cuba, for example. Right. A baseball powerhouse. When you look back, how did that happen?
Ryan Lavarnway 29:37
I think there’s a couple of things that happened. Number one. There was a bunch of American Jews for the first time ever representing Israel. So it wasn’t truly the 42nd-best country in the world. It was people that qualified to play for that country because of this specific tournament’s rules.
That being said, none of us would have made team USA, B or C or D or E or F or G. Right? None of us would have made Team America team 17. So what happened was you got a bunch of guys that got that came together that had this chip on our shoulder. I felt like I had been, you know, overlooked and undervalued in a lot of my career.
And a lot of guys shared that mentality. And we came together. And when the moment mattered most, we played our best.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 30:31
There’s a couple documentaries actually on this. One is Heading Home The Tale of Team Israel in 2018, and another one is Israel Swings for gold, which is a 2023 documentary. So people can check those out. I do want to talk about so we talked about mindset. We talked about.
You know, teamwork and leadership. I want to talk about change management for a second and thriving through change. So when you. When I think about that, I think of a big change for you is your identity is baseball and transferring out of baseball. So talk about thriving through change in that sense.
Ryan Lavarnway 31:19
Yeah. Well, I mean, it started with playing for 13 out of the 30 organizations in baseball, every time you’re traded, every time you’re released and you start with a new team. Talked about this a little bit earlier, nobody’s seen you succeed. Nobody’s seen you fail. You get to make a new first impression all over again.
And people in the real world, the corporate world, go through this all the time. There’s mergers, there’s acquisitions, there’s fears with going through new leadership. What’s the new budget going to be? What’s the new company goal is going to be where do I fit in? For me, the biggest change was leaving the baseball field because as much as you want to say baseball is what I do, it’s not who I am.
What you do is how you see the world reflect back at you. It’s how you see yourself in the world. And anytime there’s a major change, whether it be, you know, having a kid or marriage, divorce, changing careers, moving where you live, that is tumultuous and it can be hard to deal with. I do a lot of work with companies that are going through mergers or acquisitions. The biggest thing that I’ve learned through change management is, number one, you have to accept the new reality and you have to step into it.
You step into the new reality and see yourself in that new place, see how the world reflects back at you, and then try to buy in. Try to buy into the new. Alignment the new company goals. Embrace your new teammates. Every time that I stepped into a new locker room, I had to go in open and I had to go in as the best version of myself and let them see me, let them see me and try to see them.
Because if I tried to be something that I wasn’t, nobody, nobody can fake it, right? I like to bridge. I like to bridge these ideas to different metaphors that people will understand. If a kid is trying out for a high school team, whatever, sport doesn’t matter. A lot of times there’s fear.
Like, well, what if I don’t play my best? You might have experienced this. You’re shaking your head. Yeah. I always tell them that if people know what they’re looking at, if the coach is any good, if they’re worth their salt, even if it’s your worst day, they’ll know you’re better than that.
And even if you have the best day and you perform better than you should, they’ll know you’re not that good, right? They can see your swing, or they can see if you’re a soccer player. They can see your kick, your stroke, your speed. You can’t fake it. And that goes for the corporate world too. Like you can’t fake your credentials. You can’t fake your sales skills. So just be you.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:04
I’d love to hear some of your favorite managers. I know you mentioned Terry Francona. Before you talk about that, I do want to give a big thank you to David Romano. David Romano is how we met. He introduced us.
People can check him out. David, I know he talks about lowering stress and creating a happier work culture. But thanks, David for the introduction. Some of your favorite managers throughout the years.
Ryan Lavarnway 34:31
Yeah Terry Francona for one. Buck Showalter was another one. Fredi Gonzalez is up there. Clint Hurdle up there. I end up playing for 11 different managers in the big leagues.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:45
I know that Terry Francona story sticks out. Any others from advice or you remember a talk before or after a game or whenever? What sticks out to you with one of the managers in the past?
Ryan Lavarnway 34:59
Well, there’s one thing that Fredi Gonzalez said when I was on the Braves and I was actually after my first game with the Braves, and he didn’t even say it to me. And at first I didn’t know how to take it. But I later learned how wise it was, what he said. I posted about this on LinkedIn recently, my first game catching with the Braves. Fredi Gonzalez says to the media after the game. The best compliment that I can pay Ryan today is that I didn’t notice him and I.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:31
Didn’t mess up too bad. Is that right?
Ryan Lavarnway 35:33
You didn’t mess up too bad. But then you think about the position that I play as catcher, right? The catcher is kind of the unsung hero. No, maybe not even the hero. He’s the unsung player on the field, right?
Who gets all the credit if the pitching goes well? Pitcher, pitcher. And that’s how it should be, right? That’s how it should be. If you’re noticing the catcher, either the catcher did something extraordinarily well or he messed up. Right.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 36:03
Catcher or the Pitcher messed up. And the catcher.
Ryan Lavarnway 36:05
Gets the blame, right? Which is fine. But think about what a catcher does. He’s calling pitches every, every game. If he’s calling the right pitches, the pitcher shouldn’t be shaking a lot.
Catcher’s job is to understand what the pitcher wants to throw. Suggest the right pitches. Keep the game in rhythm so he shouldn’t notice that he’s doing it right. If there’s balls in the dirt, the catcher should block them. That’s what.
That’s what you expect. If they miss them, they mess up. That’s when you notice every pitch. You’re supposed to catch it. You’re supposed to get the strikes, keep the strike strikes.
If you do your job, shouldn’t notice. Keep the game in rhythm. So I learned to appreciate that as a compliment later. What Fredi Gonzalez said, and I and I think about this from the leadership perspective in the corporate world, the leader doesn’t always need to get the credit. If you’re putting your people in the right place and empowering them, let them take the credit.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 36:54
Brian, I’m curious about the preparation. Right. When different hitters are coming up, are you studying game tape before the games? Because like I’m thinking in my head, okay, every situation, every pitch, you have to call a pitch, right? So what’s the preparation?
Are you watching tape? How are you studying before the game to know what to call for. I mean, you’re looking at the pitcher’s strengths. You’re looking at the hitter’s strengths. What did that preparation?
Ryan Lavarnway 37:23
Definitely. There’s definitely some video watching of how of other pitchers that are similar to my pitcher today. Have they been attacking this guy? Has everybody been busting them up and in? Has everyone been starting him with the curveball and then throwing away?
Is everyone just sticking with the offspeed? How is the league attacking this guy? How has this guy been responding lately? And then the data revolution in baseball has been, you know, incredible. You get information way more than you could ever use of this picture today.
His movement profile. How does that play against the general right-handed hitter? The general left-handed hitter and then this hitter. Swing profile. How does that line up against these pitch profiles?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:09
Who are some of your favorite pitchers to catch for? I know the pitchers and catchers sometimes have a special bond.
Ryan Lavarnway 38:16
Yeah, I ended up changing teams so many times that I didn’t get to build really long relationships with a ton of guys. My favorite guys to catch. I mean, I think Jon Lester will be the first Hall of Famer that I got to catch on a regular basis. But I think about the guys that were bubble players, like I was that I feel like I really helped take to the next level. So like Matt McCray is a great example.
Drew Carlton is a great example. These guys that ended up having, you know, really respectable careers that when I first caught them, were stuck in Triple-A. I love those guys.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:53
I know we talked about managers, you know, and leadership from a baseball perspective. Let’s talk about from the business perspective, you know, speaking, coaching. Who are some of your mentors in that realm?
Ryan Lavarnway 39:07
Oh, man. There’s a woman here in Denver that has really taken me under her wing. And I have so much respect for and gratitude for. Her name is Jackie Insinger. And that’s actually the person that introduced me to David Mamono, who introduced me to you.
So Jackie is great and she’s so brilliant. And then there’s other coaches that have helped me a lot along the way, like the mental skills coaches from different teams where I still take learnings that they gave me as an athlete and apply them to my real life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 39:38
You know, I want to talk about — I know you do a lot of keynotes. I mentioned, you know, Harvard, Yale Law School, Kent State, another one was a gov tech company. And I’d love for you to talk about that for a second.
Ryan Lavarnway 39:51
Yeah. So those university speeches were early on in my speaking this past year. It was mostly corporate. And I did a lot of annual conferences, sales kick offs. The one to the Gulf Tech company, their name is actually Gulf Place.
That one stands out because when the CEO brought me in, she talked a lot about the culture she wanted to create, and she was in her first year as a CEO. Simone. She’s incredible. She was brought in to replace a leader who had led with a lot of negativity the year before. So two years ago, this company was a mess.
And Simone has come in and really turned it around. And the thing that stands out to me is, you know, I checked in with her six months after I came in and spoke. And she says we still use the why not us mindset. We still say every day to the sales team, why not more. And we use the language you gave us.
We hit four-run homers. You know, that’s another catchphrase for my speech. And they ended up being voted the best place to work in the DC area this year. And I don’t think, you know, I don’t think highly enough of myself to take credit for that. But what I think is that the companies that value their people, the people, the companies that value bringing in education and resources and the types of things that I offer are the same companies that thrive culturally.
So I root for every company that I work with. I really keep track of them and I really root for them. And I was so happy to see that Gulf Place was ranked one of these best places to work.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 41:33
Yeah, that’s a great story. Ryan, I have one last question before I ask it. I just want to point people. You can see here we’re on Ryan Lavarnway website here. He’s got you know you can see keynotes here.
Leadership coaching. So you can check out everything on this page here. He’s got a podcast here I mentioned you know Benny Fowler as well. So we’ll pull that up. But I do want to talk about your book a little bit. Okay. Well my kids.
Ryan Lavarnway 42:06
Book. Yeah. Know something I’m so proud of? That was a project that I didn’t expect. My rabbi actually encouraged me to turn my story into something that kids could relate to.
And, you know, that was one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever been through to try to get that right. And it turned out to be something I’m really proud of.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 42:27
So talk about the backstory a little bit. Baseball and Belonging. What’s it about?
Ryan Lavarnway 42:33
Yeah. So I grew up in a house, mixed-religion house. We celebrated holidays by getting presents and not talking about anything deeper. Baseball was my religion and my family outside of my household, and then baseball ended up helping me find where I belonged in the greater Jewish community. So every time I signed the book, I signed it with what I believe is the central theme is do what you love and find where you belong.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:02
Ryan, I’m going to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey, your stories on those many more. And everyone can check out more at Ryanlavarnway.com. Ryan, thanks so much.
Ryan Lavarnway 43:15
Yeah. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I love meeting new people and I answer all my own messages, so see you soon!
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:21
Awesome. Thanks everyone.
