Former major league pitcher shares unique definition of success with students

Paul Byrd knows the world of sports and the struggles and temptations that come with the fame and fortunes. He recently shared those experiences at two Athletes in Action campuses, using his platform as a former major league pitcher to encourage and challenge current student athletes.

Byrd, a native of Kentucky who pitched for Louisiana State University, spoke at the weekly AIA meeting at Harvard University, where Darin McFarland serves as campus director, and then the next night at Yale, where Craig Luekens works the campus as an associate staff member with AIA. Both events had an impact on students.

“The event was wonderful, as Paul once again was very inspiring and fun to listen to,” said junior Brent Suter, a pitcher at Harvard who heard Byrd speak last year at an AIA meeting. “All the guys came up to me afterwards and told me how awesome he is and how glad they were that they came. His wife, Kym, was also great and really helped everyone with life and spiritual advice.

“It was overall a fantastic event that we'll never forget.”

With 14 years of major league baseball experience under his belt, Byrd is a familiar face among sports aficionados and is known for his humor and good nature. According to McFarland, when Byrd spoke last year, he really connected with students at Harvard. So when he had the opportunity to come back this year for a meeting, the AIA director jumped at the chance.

The AIA group planned a small dinner for the men’s baseball team and women’s softball teams to hear the Byrds, then booked the couple for their weekly meeting later that night. While the dinner was a smaller group, the meeting drew around 45 attendees.

Luekens was encouraged by the show of 75-80 Yale students at his Thursday meeting with Byrd and said he felt the students really enjoyed the message Byrd gave.

“He’s really down to earth and a good guy. He has a powerful story about forgiveness and the sins he has struggled with,” said Luekens. “It’s powerful to hear someone so successful that has struggled.”

Luekens said Byrd’s main emphasis was about how much of the sports world is performance-based but Jesus is not. He pointed out that true success is about knowing one is loved and accepted by God. Along with some baseball memories, Byrd was frank about his struggles with pornography and the grace he experienced from both his wife and God in recovering. Luekens said Byrd must have connected well with many students, since some hung around to ask him more questions for another hour after the meeting.

A key aspect of Byrd’s visit was an informal time of visiting and talking strategy with the Yale baseball team earlier that night, and Luekens was encouraged with the connections made on that level. Currently only a few Yale baseball players are plugged into AIA, so Luekens plans to use that tie to follow up with players and build more relationships.

“I plan to use (Paul’s visit) as a springboard into our meetings as well,” Luekens said. “We’re going through the Gospel of Mark and how Jesus came for sinners, so it’ll be easy to tie that into his talk.”

Byrd stayed over for a Friday morning breakfast discussion with a small group of young men, sharing more frankly about sexual sin and accountability measures, while Kym met with a small group of young women on similar issues about faith and integrity.

“I think the biggest point of his talk was about knowing that success is not how the world defines it but how God defines it,” he said. “It’s not about performing for acceptance but about performing from acceptance. That’s something I talk a lot about here, so it was good to hear it from him as well.”

In his promotion for his book Free Byrd, released in 2008, Byrd noted that he began the work as a journal of his thoughts and lessons learned in baseball and friends later encouraged him to compile them into a book.

“I used to look back on the trials and think, ‘I wish I’d handled that differently,’ but now I don’t, because I learned so much. The scars I have on my arm have a purpose. The scars I have on the inside have a purpose,” Byrd said in the promos for the book, which cover his pornography struggles, his faith, fatherhood, marriage and the 2007 scandal over HGH while in Boston. “God has put it in my heart to play baseball for a reason, and now I have a platform. I want to use that when baseball’s over in whatever way He sees fit.”

Byrd was drafted in 1991 by the Cleveland Indians and played five years in the minor leagues before being traded to the New York Mets, making his major league debut in July 1995. He was named to the All-Star team in 1999 while with Philadelphia, then pitched for Kansas City and Atlanta, appearing in the 2004 National League Division Series after Tommy John surgery. He would go on to pitch for the Anaheim Angels and the Indians before wrapping up his baseball career with the Boston Red Sox.

By Teresa Young, AIA Communications

Photo courtesy Simon & Schuster

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