Eddy Alvarez and Jim Thorpe Share Unique Distinction Across Time
OKC Dodgers infielder Eddy Alvarez and Jim Thorpe are the only Major League Baseball players to medal in an Olympic sport other than baseball; Alvarez recently visited the Jim Thorpe Museum in OKC to learn more
Eddy Alvarez took two giant steps up onto the brick base platform supporting a larger-than-life statue of Jim Thorpe and gazed up at the legendary athlete’s face depicted in bronze.
In that moment, two decorated athletes appeared to meet for the first time at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark and Alvarez’s family was on hand to witness it — parents, wife, son and cousin.
As the meeting was being captured in photos, videos and memories, time snapped back to the present when a passerby shouted “you look just like him.”
Alvarez smiled politely knowing they were unaware of the breadth of the moment for him.
“He is the only other person in history to do what he did,” his wife Gaby Alvarez proudly shouted back.
Alvarez plays for the Triple-A Oklahoma City Dodgers at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, which is also home to the Jim Thorpe Museum and Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, providing a prime opportunity for the two sports figures to cross paths in a unique way.
Alvarez and Jim Thorpe share a bond across time as the only Major League Baseball players to medal in an Olympic sport other than baseball.
About 100 years separates their accomplishments, but Alvarez said he is honored and humbled to share the distinction with Thorpe. Earlier this season, Alvarez visited the museum to learn about the man who is often considered one of the greatest all-around athletes in history.
“I wasn’t anticipating how amazing it was,” he said. “It was so cool to walk through a museum like that because you realize you are following paths of unbelievable people and athletes. I was mesmerized in there.”
Alvarez, 32, had passed by Thorpe’s photo displayed along the concourse at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark and had seen Thorpe’s statue in front of the museum in OKC. But walking through the museum with his family brought the great sports figure to life as they received a tour from Museum Curator Justin Lenhart and President/Executive Director Mike James.
“I had an idea in my head of what he looked like and then I got to see more photos and it changed my perspective of him and made him more real to me,” Alvarez said.
Thorpe was born in 1887 in Indian Territory near what is now Prague, Okla., and became a multi-sport phenom who won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. He played 289 Major League Baseball games over six seasons in the National League. He was selected to the first All-NFL team in 1923 and inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1963. He was voted as the Associated Press’ Athlete of the Half Century in 1950.
Alvarez has an impressive list of accolades of his own.
In addition to playing professional baseball and appearing in 50 MLB games with the Miami Marlins and Los Angeles Dodgers from 2020–22, Alvarez is the first MLB player to have participated in the Winter Olympics. He won a silver medal in the 5,000-meter relay in speed skating at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
Alvarez also holds the distinction of being one of just six Olympic athletes ever to medal in both the Summer and Winter Games, and just the third American to do so. He won a silver medal in baseball last summer during the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and also was selected as a Team USA flag bearer for the Olympic opening ceremony.
Baseball and skating have both been part of Alvarez’s life since a very young age. The son of Cuban immigrants grew up in Miami, Fla., taking a unique path to become one of the world’s elite skaters, while also excelling on the baseball diamond.
Alvarez received a pair of inline skates on a memorable Christmas morning during his childhood.
“He put them on and he just went on them,” his mother Mabel said. “It was as if he was born with them.”
Every weekend the family would go to South Beach where Alvarez would learn new tricks and techniques. Trips north to Fort Lauderdale for inline practices eventually followed, as did wins in national inline skating competitions. His parents eventually bought him hockey skates to see what he could do on the ice and he adapted quickly.
Skating practices would take place before school and baseball practices after school.
More success followed on the ice and he would travel to train in Milwaukee at the Olympic Training Center for speed skating as a teenager, with his family even buying a house there to help with traveling for training.
“Friday after school, (we took a) plane (to Milwaukee), practice Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday we would fly back. That was the closest place that had the two disciplines — the short track and long track,” Mabel said. “Eddy did short track, long track and then inline skating and then baseball, travel baseball, school baseball, you-name-it baseball.”
Alvarez and his wife Gaby grew up in the same Miami neighborhood and attended the same elementary school. Eddy’s nickname growing up was Eddy the Jet.
“I am not joking that I would say that once every couple of weeks I would see him on the morning announcements with a new trophy,” Gaby said. “I was like, ‘wow what is Eddy going to show us today?’”
Alvarez would reach the pinnacle of each of his sports.
During the COVID-19-shortened 2020 baseball season, Alvarez made his Major League debut with the Miami Marlins. He told his parents he got the call to the Majors through windows of their Miami home.
“We couldn’t even hug him. We couldn’t even kiss him,” Mabel said. “We couldn’t because of the pandemic and they were so protected.”
Gaby was pregnant with their son Jett at the time of her husband’s call-up and just weeks away from their son’s birth. She could barely contain her excitement.
“I was watching him at his first at-bat I almost went into labor,” she said. “It was my hometown team. It was a mile away from our home in the same neighborhood that we both grew up in and are still in and our whole family is in.”
Alvarez signed with the Dodgers as a free agent Jan. 1 of this year.
The infielder played in 14 games with the Los Angeles Dodgers during the month of June and has played in 47 games with the OKC Dodgers throughout the season, posting a .322 batting average with 21 extra-base hits, 29 RBI and 40 runs scored. His .439 on-base percentage leads the team, while his .batting average ranks second.
At the time of his call-up to Los Angeles in early June, Alvarez’s .426 on-base percentage ranked third in the Pacific Coast League, while his four triples were tied for second and his .926 OPS was eighth. Upon his return to the team, Alvarez went 9-for-19 (.474) with a double, three homers and seven RBI and hit safely in five straight games prior to a foot injury that landed him on the IL in mid-July.
His list of athletic accomplishments is long and varied, but one stands out to him — carrying the U.S. flag in Tokyo at the Olympic opening ceremony alongside basketball legend Sue Bird before going on to win a silver medal with Team USA in baseball last summer. U.S. teammates voted him and Bird as flag bearers for Team USA in the 2020 Summer Games that were postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was something special,” he said. “It just makes me feel like my journey, my career, is being seen and heard from other athletes.
“The anticipation from the traveling and waiting for the opening ceremonies to start, it was so long. And then when it happened, it was like a blink of an eye. It was incredible … I never thought in a million years I would have that opportunity. To be able to do that, I will cherish that forever.”
While baseball is his sole sports focus now, Alvarez still has a pair of inline skates he’ll travel with on occasion. Last season he would skate to work at the ballpark in the Marlins farm system. As for ice skating, his family rented out the Miami arena he grew up skating in for his last birthday.
“All my family and friends came out and we had the whole place to ourselves and that was the last time I skated,” he said. “Prior to that, it had been five years since I put on my ice skates.”
So what remains on Alvarez’s list to accomplish in the sports world?
He plans to pursue a new venture and may soon try competing for ratings rather than wins and losses.
Alvarez has been working with a television production company to create a show that shares the stories of athletes competing in sports outside of the mainstream. He plans to host and live a day in the life of athletes training and competing in unique sports throughout the country, helping to share their journeys, training regiments and shine light on those often competing outside of the spotlight.
Alvarez brings a unique perspective having competed in both Olympic sports and Major League Baseball. That is how the idea for the show came about.
“I have had the opportunity to live in two extremely different worlds — the Olympic world and the mainstream sports world — and the difference in treatment is far in between,” he said.
How this next chapter writes itself will soon be seen, but one thing is guaranteed, Alvarez will give it his all to make it a success.
“I give — in that moment of time — all of me just because I don’t want to look back and regret things,” he said. “So if I fail, I fail, but at least I gave myself the chance to succeed.”
His mom has seen that drive from the beginning and all have seen him at the top of both the baseball and skating worlds.
“It has been an amazing ride,” Mabel said. “I knew that something was going to come out of it because he is persistent and a perfectionist that something had to come out of it and it did.
“Teamwork that was worth every minute of it.”
Back at the Jim Thorpe Museum at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, the Alvarez family stopped for a photo together in front of a Jim Thorpe mural before exiting the museum.
Alvarez said he found Thorpe’s journey relatable beyond their bond as athletes, but also as a Cuban-American whose family came to the United States in search of freedom, liberty and opportunity.
“Understanding what he had to go through too — being a minority in this country and kind of accepting the cards that he was dealt, and moving on with his life and moving forward and doing unbelievable things in his career,” Alvarez said. “To me, that is what stood out the most and kind of reminds me of all the sacrifices that my family had to do and take to give me this chance to play here and be a two-time Olympian.”
