New York Daily News Archive / Getty

When he was one, Alavrez emigrated to the U.S. from his native Dominican Republic. As a baseball-obsessed teenager in Washington heights, a largely working-class Dominican neighborhood, Alvarez was not a likely candidate for the Horace Mann School, an expensive private institution which doesn't have the most illustrious baseball pedigree.

(BTW, the photo above is from Washington Heights, though it was taken in 2006, when Alvarez was 19, so he probably isn't one of the kids playing in the fire hydrant.)