WORCESTER — Eddy Alvarez has been trapped in a love triangle for most of his life, torn between his passion for two completely different sports: speed skating and baseball.
So what did he do?
He earned Olympic medals in both of them.
The WooSox infielder/outfielder owns an extremely rare place in Olympic history. After winning a silver medal in the 5,000 meter relay as a short track speed skater for the United States in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Alvarez medaled again with the USA baseball team in 2020 in Tokyo, making him only the sixth athlete and third American in history to medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
When he made his major league debut for his hometown Miami Marlins in 2020, he became only the second person ever – alongside the illustrious Jim Thorpe – to play Major League Baseball and win an Olympic Medal in another sport.
“I don’t think I’ve been able to process my journey quite yet just because I’m still in the fire,” Alvarez said. “I know it’ll come one day and I’m okay with that. I’m just kind of stacking more on my resume and one day I think when I’m sitting back and I’m in a wheelchair, which is sooner rather than later, I think it’ll hit me and I’ll be able to share those stories with my grandkids.”
Let’s go back to the beginning. How does a kid from Miami find himself as one of the best speed skaters in the country?
While baseball was his first love (“I was banging things around with a bat before I could walk,” says Alvarez), rollerskating was a social activity. On a pair of inline skates, Alvarez was performing tricks and impressing crowds along Miami’s South Beach as young as five or six. Picture a kid in tights and a bandana, hopping over boxes for crowds of beachgoers.
”It was every weekend I’d go to South Beach just for fun,” Alvarez said. “And that’s when I kind of got scouted out to try the sport of speed skating.”
He first hit the ice at age 7, and his speed skating career took off. It was around this time Alvarez became focused on his biggest dream: to represent his country in the OIympics.
And before he even hit high school, that dream was coming within reach. At age eleven, “Eddy the Jet” won the “triple crown of skating” – national age level titles in inline speed skating, long track speed skating, and short track speed skating.
During high school, Alvarez was split between his two loves, and was falling behind in both. So he chose the path that would be likelier to get him to that Olympic podium.
“My first love was baseball, but I always knew that I wanted to go to the Olympics, so that was my goal in skating,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez didn’t make the Olympic team in 2010, finishing seventh at trials. He then took a break from skating, because at only 21 years old, Alvarez’s knees were so damaged from years of skating that he sometimes couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Turns out he had multiple tears in both patellar tendons. He’d need a major surgery, one that could have ended not just his skating career, but his athletic dreams entirely.
He underwent the surgery in 2012 to prepare for a chance at the 2014 Olympics. Alvarez was immobile and bedridden for weeks as he recovered.
”That was probably the darkest time of my life,” Alvarez recalled.
After a long and arduous rehabilitation, Alvarez worked his way up the U.S. rankings, and became the first Cuban-American male speed skater to make a U.S. Olympic team ahead of the Sochi games in 2014.
Eddy Alvarez competes in speed skating in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.Eddy Alvarez Instagram
In Sochi, Alvarez fell further in love with the Olympic Games, meeting athletes from around the globe and experiencing sports that he knew nothing about prior.
“One of my favorite things was to go to the weight room and get my workouts in, because you got to hang out with different athletes of different sports of all those countries and you just see how they function, how they train, how they prepare,” Alvarez said. “It’s one of those things, if you are an Olympic athlete, you really cherish it, and it’s a special feeling.”
Despite some unfortunate collisions and falls in his individual events in Sochi, Alvarez medaled as part of the 5,000-meter relay team. At 24 years old, Alvarez achieved the lofty goal he set for himself as a child.
Less than four months after the end of the Olympics and with just one season of community college baseball under his belt, Alvarez began to pursue the next goal: making it to the MLB. He signed a minor-league deal with the White Sox and rose through their system until he was traded to the Marlins in 2019. He added the next line to his impressive resume on August 5, 2020, when he made his MLB debut for Miami.
Finally, ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Alvarez’s love of baseball and passion for the Olympics came to a union. He was named to the roster of the United States national baseball team that qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympics, joining only Eddie Eagan (gold in boxing in 1920; gold in bobsleigh in 1932) and Lauryn Williams (medaled in track events in 2004/2012; silver in bobsleigh in 2014) as the third American to medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
The United States baseball team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, including Eddy Alvarez, and his fellow Red Sox organization members Triston Casas, Jamie Westbrook and Mark Koloszary (not pictured)Eddy Alvarez Instagram
Alvarez further cemented his place in United States Olympic history when he was selected, along with basketball player Sue Bird, to be the flag bearer to the USA in the opening ceremonies in Tokyo. It was an opportunity that was not lost on Alvarez, the son of Cuban immigrants, as he contemplated all of the sacrifices made by those who came before him to allow him that chance.
”It was one of the most emotional moments of my life,” Alvarez said. “Selfishly, I knew that I made a lot of sacrifices, but it runs much deeper than that. Because the amount of sacrifices that were made through generations prior to me, from my family, it’s the only reason why I had that opportunity to be the flag bearer and represent my blood, my heritage, and everyone behind me.
Eddy Alvarez and Sue Bird carry the United States flag during the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.Eddy Alvarez Instagram
“It was my family that left the country to come to the United States for opportunity and freedom with nothing,” Alvarez continued. “So the fact that they gave me every chance possible to make something of that, it’s an incredible feeling and more fulfilling knowing that I was the flag bearer for them.”
These days, Alvarez is an ambassador for the Olympics while he focuses on his baseball career and family. He was a member of the selection committee for the Los Angeles Olympics, and he and the committee made sure they “did everything in [their] power to get baseball and softball” back in the Olympic program after the sports were left out of Paris 2024.
His love for the Olympics doesn’t wane when he’s not in the games.
“I’m obsessed with the Olympics,” Alvarez said. “I love the spirit, the nostalgic feeling of just going through memories and seeing when these athletes…have that moment where they make it and you can see the excitement. I’m getting chills just thinking about it. I can relate to that. I’m a super Olympic fan and I watch every sport when I can, always and forever.”
