Olympic medalist fulfills MLB dream
He has lived the dream not once but twice, first on a medal stand, again in the batter’s box, overcoming no shortage of barriers both physical and implied.
Yet even Eddy Alvarez catches himself wondering sometimes.
“We all deal with our inner pessimist,” Alvarez said Thursday from the sanctum of the Miami Marlins’ visiting clubhouse area in Baltimore. “We just try to find as much positivity as we can find. Positive thinking creates positive results.”
And sometimes, it turns literal dreams into reality.
Alvarez made his major league debut Wednesday, at an unlikely age – 30 – and under unlikely circumstances. To be sure, the novel coronavirus that has ravaged the globe and infected 17 Marlins as of last week created a roster opening that Alvarez filled.
But the path taken and determination to complete it tell a story of a young man who seems to believe anything is possible.
What other major leaguer took a significant detour from the sport to try his hand at short-track speed skating, gave that up to give his barking, surgically repaired patellar tendons a break, only to return and claim a silver medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics?
How many others would go from medal stand to a bus ticket, signing as an undrafted free agent with the Chicago White Sox, and still press on even after getting mired in low Class A ball at age 25?
It would be easier to say Alvarez ignored the odds, existed in a state of blissful ignorance and knew his time would come.
No, he was quite aware of how his age would be viewed in a sport that prioritizes the young even more now than ever.
“It’s the truth behind the system,” Alvarez said on a video call Thursday. “And as much crap as it is, age is a huge obstacle for a lot of guys in this game. But I’ve always considered myself a very young athlete.
“If you saw what I looked like in high school you probably would’ve laughed. I looked like I should have been in middle school. I didn’t really hit my stride until my Olympic year.
“It may say 30 on paper, but I don’t look the part, I don’t act the part, and I do my best to play like that.”
Yet Alvarez knows there is no carrying tool that will keep him around forever. At 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, he readily admits that “I don’t out-lift anybody, I don’t run faster than a lot of people. That’s all right. It’s no reason to not take failure head on.”
What he does have is a good bit of speed, an idea of what he’s doing from both sides of the plate and an obvious fearlessness that is perhaps the most important prerequisite for a major leaguer.
Alvarez grew up the son of Cuban immigrants in Miami, casting his lot both in baseball and in varying forms of skates on his feet – inline, ice, short track, long track, whatever.
He was skating at an international level by the time he was out of high school, yet failed to qualify for the 2010 Games in Vancouver. By then, his knees were failing, and baseball was looking better.
At this key juncture, the support of officials in both sports proved crucial.
He found allies within US Speedskating who wrote him a letter of residency while he was living near its training center in Salt Lake City that enabled him to re-start his baseball career at a community college there.
At that point, Alvarez was quite literally an athlete on parallel tracks, aiming for Sochi while mashing for Salt Lake Community College.
“The skating world has been nothing but supportive to me, all the way through the journey,” he says, “ever since I sat down with them and explained my goals and needs. I’ve been very blessed to have an organization like that having my back.”
Their faith paid off. Alvarez was part of a 5,000meter relay team that claimed silver in Sochi, .27 seconds behind the victorious Russians.
The climb in baseball would be steeper. Alvarez dominated in his first full year in the minors, stealing 53 bases and producing an .834 OPS in 2015. But he was more than three years older than the average player in the low A Midwest League, where he spent most of that year.
A penchant for getting on base – Alvarez’s career on-base percentage in the minors is .375 – pushed him to Class AAA, but he never cracked the White Sox’s 40-man roster before the Marlins acquired him at the end of spring training in 2019.
He earned a non-roster invite to major league spring training, a particularly crucial development in this year. First off, he caught the eye of manager Don Mattingly with his advanced approach at the plate and athleticism.
“Eddy’s a Bo Jacksontype athlete,” Mattingly says, unflinchingly.
His strong spring proved more crucial when the pandemic upended the season, shuttering the minor leagues almost entirely. When Major League Baseball settled on the logistics of a 2020 season, Alvarez received another invite to “summer camp” and inclusion in their 60-player pool.
This time, the look was much longer.
“I’ll applaud myself for this: I don’t think I ever lost focus,” Alvarez said of his training while the sport was quarantined. “I’ve always strived to challenge myself. That’s the best opportunity I gave myself – to work hard and see what came of it.
“Summer camp was just a reminder that I belong.”
He went hitless in five at-bats in his major league debut, and though he doesn’t want to jinx it, plans on placing the ball from an eventual first hit next to his silver medal.
A bigger surprise awaits by the end of the month, when Alvarez and his significant other are expecting a first child.
He says he “lost it” at their Miami home when he got the call to the majors, and scampered the half-mile or so to his childhood abode to tell his parents, or, more accurately, scream at them, “We did it!” through the windows.
Though the six years in the minors flew by, he says, it belies the toil it took to arrive.
“Baseball is relentless,” he says.
“It’s an opportunity I worked a ridiculous amount of time for. I’m just going to make the best of it.”