This article appears in the Spring 2026 issue of the FCA Donor Publication. The FCA publication is a gift from our FCA staff to all donors giving $50 or more annually. For more information about giving, visit here.
Parker Byrd loves baseball.
Not love as in “I love this taco” or “I’d love to see that movie,” but a consuming, passionate, encompassing love. He was the child who always had a ball in his hand, who went to Atlanta Braves games to watch his favorite player, Brian McCann, and arrived at the stadium wearing a full baseball uniform.
The Byrd family — including his parents, Jeff and Mitzi, and his two sisters, Gracen and Brinley — were churchgoers in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Jeff and Mitzi taught their kids about Jesus, but as travel baseball demanded more time, the family often missed Sunday services.
Still, sports and faith blended along the way. As a high school freshman, Byrd attended an FCA Fields of Faith event near his home and heard former Major League Baseball All-Star Darryl Strawberry share about his spiritual journey. That night, Byrd surrendered his life to Jesus.
Byrd seemed to have everything going for him. As a senior at Scotland High School, he was ranked the nation’s 75th-best shortstop by the scouting service Perfect Game and had a scholarship to play at East Carolina University. The road to playing professionally seemed smoothly paved. Baseball was everything.
In the summer of 2022, Byrd and the rest of ECU’s incoming first-year players arrived in Greenville to settle into their new environment and start conditioning. On July 23, he and some other players went to a home near the Pamlico River owned by one of his teammates’ parents for a day of fun in the sun.
One hundred fifty miles away in Laurinburg, Jeff and Mitzi were settling in at home after an anniversary trip. Suddenly, Jeff’s phone rang. There was a boating accident. Parker had gotten caught in the boat’s propeller and was being medically airlifted to ECU Health in Greenville. When Jeff and Mitzi arrived, Pirates Head Coach Cliff Godwin was already there and Parker was in the operating room.
“I remember Jeff asking, ‘He's a baseball player at ECU. Is he going to be able to play baseball?’” Mitzi said. “And the surgeon just looked at us like we were crazy and said, ‘I got the bleeding to stop, and your son’s alive. That’s about all I can tell you.’”
Weeks of surgeries, medical troubleshooting and time in the intensive care unit followed. The biggest concern was Byrd’s right leg: It wasn’t allowing blood flow to the rest of the body. More surgeries and medications followed as doctors tried to save the leg. Eventually, the vascular surgeon offered two options: Continue the medication route, which could lead to kidney infection and Byrd’s body shutting down, or amputate the leg and live.
“I guess I really don’t have an option now, do I?” Byrd said. “I guess we need to amputate. I want to live.”
Reality hit hard. The normally upbeat Byrd sank into sadness, his faith hitting a wall. Until that moment, “it was just mountaintop after mountaintop,” he said, “so I really didn’t have to lean into that faith as much.”
Back in Laurinburg, the community held a prayer vigil the night before the amputation. Mitzi had been posting updates on Facebook, and the Byrd family was well supported. On the night of the vigil, Parker sent out a voice memo with a tone of hope: “Thank you for praying for me. God’s writing a story for me. And I don’t know what’s gonna come out of this story, but it’s gonna be something powerful.”
Yet as he lay in his hospital bed, questions swirled in Byrd’s head. He lived for sports. What would this mean for the rest of his life? His baseball career? What was he supposed to do now if he couldn’t do what he felt born to do?
The thought of not playing drove him deeper into a pit of despair. That’s where God, through Mitzi, began to pull him out.
“Momma,” Parker said, “I don’t feel like I’m going to play baseball again.”
“Why not?” she responded.
Byrd looked at her. “There has never been anyone who played Division I ball with a prosthetic leg.”
Mitzi, with a mother’s faith in a good God and belief in her son, spoke her next words carefully: “There always has to be a first, so why can’t it be you?”
Following the amputation on Aug. 4, 2022, Byrd began the long road of rehab, building up his muscles and learning to use his body in a new way. The Byrds relocated to Greenville, and Parker moved in with his parents while he adjusted to life without a limb. By the fall of 2022, he had undergone more than 20 surgeries. That Christmas, he received his first prosthetic, which opened a whole new world.
“Parker’s determined and laser-focused, goal-driven, always thinking, ‘What’s next?’” Mitzi said. “That helped him in his recovery because it would be, ‘Okay, I’ve learned how to walk forward. Now I have to learn how to step back, then to the side, and re-hit,’ because his whole swing had to change.”
This included going to the batting cage with Jeff, watching the ball zip out of the machine as he sat in his wheelchair to reacclimate his senses to pitch velocity and movement. When Byrd would achieve one goal, he’d make another. Through steadfast determination, he started seeing results, but it hurt watching teammates take reps that he wanted.
Over time, Byrd realized baseball wasn’t something simply for himself, but part of something bigger. He embraced Matthew 5:14-16, seeking to shine God’s light in the world — not just through his carefree smile and amiable personality, but by the depth of his character and passion to help others in similar situations. Doors have swung open for Byrd to share his testimony with audiences of all ages. Last fall, he spoke at the same Fields of Faith that he attended so many years ago. And in March, he shared his testimony with more than 2,400 FCA staff members and their spouses at the ministry’s biennial Realtime event in Orlando, Florida. At Byrd is a leader for FCA’s Huddle at ECU and has spoken at multiple other FCA events.
“He’s been a great role model for the students,” said FCA Eastern Carolina Metro Director David Wall. “He’s been such an encouragement.”
“I started to find the purpose of why I was doing this,” Byrd said. “For a while, it was for myself and to get back on the field. Then I really started to realize that my story can impact others, that I can be a light at the end of the tunnel for so many people.”
On Feb. 16, 2024, with the wild cheers of a home crowd at ECU’s Clark-LeClair Stadium surrounding him, Byrd stepped into the batter’s box in the bottom of the eighth inning in a game against Rider. All the surgeries, treatments, appointments, prayers, tears, resilience and belief brought him here, to a small rectangular space marked by white chalk that held so much significance. After missing his entire freshman season due to his injury, this was his first collegiate plate appearance.
Jeff and Mitzi, standing in the front row on the first base side, clapped and cheered while navigating the weight of many emotions. “It was the most joyous moment to see him, and to see the way the crowd erupted,” Jeff said. “I think Pirate Nation wanted it just as much as we did.”
The result of Byrd’s trip to the plate? A walk. In doing so, he became one of only a few baseball players in NCAA Division I history to see game action while wearing a prosthetic limb.
Byrd appeared in two more games that season. Last year, he appeared in two games and made the most of each. On March 12, 2025, he hit a sacrifice fly — earning his first collegiate RBI — in a game against Virginia Commonwealth. Two days later, after being inserted as a pinch hitter against William & Mary, he recorded his first collegiate hit. In April 2025, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein awarded Byrd a Laurel Wreath for outstanding athletic contributions in the state.
As a senior this year, Byrd had not yet seen game action as of the magazine’s deadlines in early March. Yet despite his limited playing time, Byrd’s college career has felt deeper and more meaningful than he could’ve ever imagined. On any given day at ECU home games, you can see people of all ages wearing No. 16 jerseys — Byrd’s number — who also have missing limbs and prosthetics. They come to see the young man who defied the odds and made history.
“To see him still be able to compete at a Division I level was awesome, but then you look in the stands and kids are waiting after the game for his autograph,” Jeff said. “He’s the kid who gets very few at-bats, but he’s the one after the end of the game that people are coming up to because he gives people hope.”
The impact of Byrd’s story has reverberated far beyond Greenville. His dream is to start a foundation that would help amputees through the harrowing process of surgery and life with a prosthetic. He also has his sights set on making the 2028 U.S. Paralympic team — possibly as a discus thrower — and is considering graduate school in California to train at one of the Team USA facilities near San Diego.
“Parker Byrd could have been an All-American shortstop and he would not have had the platform he has here,” Godwin said. “He’s given hope to so many people across the world.”
Despite the extreme trials he’s endured and the complete alteration of his life since that fateful day in 2022, Byrd can look at his circumstances and honestly say he’s grateful.
“July 23 was the day that my life changed forever, but I think it’s in the most positive way now,” he said. “Now, I have a relationship with God and got to know Him for who He is. He became more real. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
-FCA-
Photos courtesy of Jeff Byrd and ECU Athletics