Isaac Hess
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Speaking

They told me the joint would end it. I pitched seven more seasons on it.

I had a total hip replacement at nineteen. Baseball-Reference lists me as the first minor league pitcher to have had one (I pitched Triple-A in the Liga Mexicana de Béisbol in 2010, which held Triple-A classification within Minor League Baseball from 1967 until the 2021 reorganization). Twenty-one years later I am still throwing a hundred pitches a game. That is the talk: not a motivational abstraction about adversity, but a specific, checkable thing that happened.

Every number here is on Baseball-Reference →
Isaac Hess pitching

What I actually talk about

  • The average was written for somebody else

    Every prognosis is built from a population. I was nineteen, and there was nobody like me in the data. For patient audiences, clinical teams, and anyone whose job is telling people what they will not do again. The difference between a statistic and a person.

    Orthopedic and medtech · hospital joint programs · patient education

  • Use it as a reason. Not as an excuse.

    The line my brother and I landed on, and the one I have organized twenty years around. What separates the people who use a hard thing as fuel from the people who use it as a permission slip, with the unglamorous mechanics of which one you become.

    Corporate · schools · teams · leadership offsites

  • Coaching kids so they keep playing

    Seven pro seasons, then a decade coaching youth baseball across three states. What actually develops a young athlete, what quietly runs them off, and why the fun is not a reward for the work. It is the mechanism.

    Youth sports organizations · coaching clinics · little leagues

Formats

  • Keynote

    Twenty to sixty minutes. The story, built toward one idea the room can use on Monday.

  • Fireside or panel

    Interviewed or in conversation. Often the better format for clinical and medtech audiences, where the questions are the point.

  • Clinic or workshop

    On a field or in a room. Coaching mechanics, practice design, or return-to-activity work, hands-on rather than from a stage.

  • Virtual

    Remote for teams and distributed groups. Lower cost, no travel, same material.

Plainly, so nobody is surprised

I am not a career speaker. I have been paid to speak and I have taught classes, but informally. I do not have a conference reel or a wall of logos, and I would rather say that here than have you find out after you have booked me. What I have is a story almost nobody else on earth has, a record you can verify in about ninety seconds, and twenty years of telling it to players, parents, and teams. If you need a polished circuit professional, I am not him. If you want the real thing, tell me about your event.

Tell me about your event

Dates, audience, and what you are hoping the room walks out with. I read these myself and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit.