With a new silver medal — his second —Olympicbaseball playerEddy Alvareztold reporters on Saturday night that the last few years of his life were still sinking in.
“I had no idea this is where I was going to end up,” hesaid. “Once I retired from skating, never in my wildest dreams would I ever think I would have the chance to come back to the Olympics.”
Seven years ago, after Alvarez helped the U.S. men’s speedskating team win a relay medal, he sounded equally grateful: “It’s so relieving,” hesaid then. “I literally feel like I just came out of a spa.”
“I’m not saying I am the greatest athlete ever to walk this planet, but to be in that elite group is something special,” hetoldThe New York Timesrecently.
“Just to be that small percentage of that small percentage is nuts,” he said.
Eddy Alvarez.AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
Alvarez’s sports career has zigged and zagged: A Florida native, he was a high school and college baseball standout who grew up skating and who decided to focus on speedskating in the years before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
Afterward, hewent into the minor leaguesand made his major league debut, with the Miami Marlins, last year.
Though the U.S. Olympic baseball team fell to Japan in the gold medal game on Saturday, 0-2, their defeat of South Korea in the semifinals ensured they all walked away with a silver.
“Feels like déjà vu,” Alvarez, an infielder and the team’s lead-off hitter, said on Saturday.
“It’s just as heavy as the other one,” he told reporters. “Same color, little different design, but it’s still an incredible journey, an incredible experience.”
He has said he plans to use the bonuses paid out to American medalists — $22,500 for each silver — for his family.
“It’s going to be a little different now that I have a son,” Alvarez said of his 1-year-old, Jett,according to theTimes. “It’ll go toward him.”
To learn more about Team USA, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Tokyo Olympics now on NBC.
source: people.com
