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Community Corner

Congenital Amputee Competes Despite Disability

ESPN's Dave Stevens keeps active playing baseball and giving motivational speeches.

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By Lisa Lenkiewicz

Dave Stevens of East Haven, Connecticut, is an amazing athlete. As a high schooler in Arizona he set three state records: most takedowns in wrestling, most career baseball walks and most walks in a season. As a college athlete at Augsburg College, in Minnesota, he competed in varsity football, baseball and wrestling.

In 1996, he played minor league baseball and was an outfielder and second baseman for the St. Paul Saints and was a teammate of Darryl Strawberry—pinch hitting for the then-New York Yankees star on a rehabilitation assignment. Stevens also had a football tryout with the Dallas Cowboys, and baseball tryouts with the Minnesota Twins and Cincinnati Reds.

Remarkably, he has accomplished all this despite being 3 feet, 2 inches tall. Stevens is a congenital amputee (he was born without legs) resulting from the drug Thalidomide his mother took to combat severe morning sickness, but was later found to cause birth defects. He is the only athlete ever to play college football or minor league baseball without legs. On the field, Stevens runs using his hands (see videos).

In a video about his life, Stevens says: “I learned at an early age that I wanted to go out and do everything else everybody else did…so I just started playing sports.”

An assignment desk manager at ESPN, where he has worked for 18 years, he has covered 11 Super Bowls, three World Series, three NCAA Final Fours and co-hosts a yearly Celebrity Amputee Golf tournament in the Orlando area. He has won seven Emmy Awards for ESPN shows.

He keeps active taking batting and fielding practice with the Tampa Rays and Minnesota Twins in Florida and travels the country as a motivational speaker.

Stevens told Patch his biggest challenge today is life as a single father raising three boys, ages, 5, 7 and 9. He works hard to give them what he terms a “normal life.” He coaches his youngest son’s tee-ball team. He and his girlfriend Kim Coppola, who has two children, ages 11 and 8, go on family adventures and plan to spend a week at DisneyWorld this summer.

“My family is my greatest accomplishment. The love my boys have for me makes everything worthwhile,” said Stevens. “They don’t care that their dad has no legs; they love me for me.”

Stevens sums up his awe-inspiring journey: “I have lived a blessed life… not too bad for a legless kid from the cowboy town of Wickenburg, Arizona.”

The Amazing life and times of Dave Stevens

Dave Stevens 2013 Motivational Speaker- overcoming adversity

We’re dedicating the months of April and May to telling the stories of people locally and statewide who have overcome the impossible, affecting positive change in their own lives, or in communities. Sponsored by Grape-Nuts.

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