Dave Blackburn beamed, surrounded by a crowd of American athletes and cheering spectators. It was like old times, with the great pitcher basking in applause.
But Blackburn wasn’t being ushered off the field with a championship trophy in hand, as he was after leading the U.S. softball team to gold medals in four earlier Maccabiah Games.
Instead, Blackburn maneuvered his wheelchair down an aisle to the front of a reception hall after being named one of 10 athletes to carry the U.S. banner onto the field for the July 18 opening ceremonies of the games.
The selection may have constituted Blackburn’s ultimate athletic triumph — part acknowledgment of the outsize contribution he has made to the quadrennial Jewish athletic competition, and part gratitude for surviving a gruesome car accident in 2010 that took part of his right leg, broke 27 bones, put him in a coma and ended his softball career.
What a career it was.
Blackburn estimates he pitched 1,800 games — winning about 1,400 of them, including 70 no-hitters. Along with his four Maccabiah golds, he led the U.S. team to a silver and a bronze medal at the games and has been inducted into multiple softball halls of fame.
For this year’s games, held July 17-30, Blackburn was back in Israel to perform a symbolic act: tossing the ceremonial first pitch at the softball gold-medal game on July 29 between the United States and Canada. The U.S. won, 6-2, and Blackburn’s No. 7 jersey was retired at the award ceremony.
That Blackburn, 53, could do even that is remarkable. After his accident, he lay in a coma for nearly two months at a trauma center, followed by another three months at a hospital and more than three months at a rehabilitation center.
Luckily, Blackburn suffered no spinal damage, but he still needed plenty of rehabilitation to strengthen his arms and learn to use a wheelchair. The exercises likely came in handy as Blackburn embraced a new sport at this year’s games: table tennis.
Blackburn continues to battle serious medical challenges, yet he has “somehow managed to keep a positive outlook,” said Jeff Bukantz, the general chairman of Maccabi USA who first met Blackburn in 1985.
At Shabbat dinner on July 26, Blackburn regaled Bukantz and other guests for hours with jokes, stories and reminiscences. It was, Bukantz said, evidence of Blackburn’s “will to live, his love of life.”
Blackburn reveled in his first Maccabiah since the accident. At another U.S. delegation event, he was asked to recite the Birkat HaGomel, the short prayer of gratitude for emerging from a life-threatening crisis.
Saying the blessing “made me feel much better, that in front of my Jewish sports friends I got to thank the Lord, in Hebrew, for saving me from what should have been this calamity,” Blackburn said.
That scene and others were captured for a documentary Blackburn is producing about his career, with a focus on the Maccabiah’s influence.
The Maccabi movement has enabled him to see the world — not just Israel, but also Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Chile for the off-year Pan Am competitions. The experiences stamped on Blackburn the ethos of Jewish brotherhood and constitute his strongest sense of Jewish identity, along with providing an important social circle for the lifelong bachelor.
Wherever he went this Maccabiah, Blackburn was embraced.
“The American, Canadian, Mexican, Israeli players — I got bruises from all the hugs I got from them. I got lots of love from all my friends,” Blackburn said. “The notion of coming back to Israel — and not only being alive, but participating — that means a lot to me.”