Zoilo Versalles- an MVP that Wasn't

The first Latin player in Major League Baseball history to win the Most Valuable Player Award was not Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, nor Tony Oliva; Zoilo Versalles has that distinction. In 1965, the Minnesota Twins' shortstop Zoilo Versalles was easily voted the American League MVP. But looking back at the numbers Zoilo Versalles put up in '65 as the Twins won the pennant over the White Sox by seven games, one has to wonder how he was voted the MVP. Statistically, Zoilo Versalles did not measure up to many of his own teammates, never mind the rest of his league. And the runner-up to Zoilo Versalles that year in the MVP voting should have been the first Latin player to be named an MVP, Tony Oliva.

I am not attempting to denigrate the play of Zoilo Versalles in what was his career year. The Cuban-born infielder led the American League in doubles and triples, runs scored, and at-bats in 1965. Zoilo Versalles stole 27 bases as the Twins' leadoff batter, and he hit 19 home runs. The Twins went to their first World Series in large part due to his play, where they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two after shocking the Dodgers by winning the first pair of contests in Minnesota. Zoilo Versalles never came close to duplicating his 1965 season, and the Twins traded him away after the 1967 campaign; Zoilo Versalles was out of baseball in 1972 at the age of 31.

Tony Oliva was also born in Cuba and in 1965 he was a 26 year old outfielder playing in his second full season with the Twins. Batting in the middle of the order, Oliva knocked in 98 runs with a batting average of .321. He hit for a much higher average than did Zoilo Versalles (.273) and struck out half as much. Indeed, Zoilo Versalles led the entire league in strikeouts that year. Zoilo Versalles also committed 39 errors at short in 1965, the most of his career. Oliva's .321 batting average won him his second straight batting crown, the second of his three. The only player to win a batting title in his first two years in the big leagues, Tony Oliva, not Zoilo Versalles, was named The Sporting News Player of the Year in 1965. However, Zoilo Versalles received 19 first place votes in the MVP balloting to but one for the slugging Oliva.

On his own team, Zoilo Versalles ranked fourth in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Twins' mound ace Jim "Mudcat" Grant could have staked his own claim as AL MVP in 1965 as well. Like Zoilo Versalles, Grant had his career year in '65, going 21-7 in his first full season in a Minnesota uniform, winning six more games than his next best total for a single year. The Chicago White Sox had their own candidate for MVP, reliever Eddie Fisher, who went 15-7 with 24 saves for the second place Pale Hose. Plenty of pitchers had already been named MVPs, so it was not like the voters would have been setting a dangerous precedent if they had named Fisher or Grant over Zoilo Versalles. But Fisher wound up fourth in the voting, with Grant finishing in sixth.

Brooks Robinson's 18 homer, 80 RBI season garnered the Gold Glove third baseman a third place spot in the 1965 MVP tally, after he had won the award the previous year. The Indians' Rocky Colavito, having his last great season of a fine professional baseball career, knocked in 108 runs, had 93 walks, and smashed 26 homers for the Tribe. But he ran a very distant fifth to Zoilo Versalles in the MVP vote. Detroit's Willie Horton had a year similar to Colavito's, but his 104 runs batted in only got him eight place in the MVP derby, more than 250 points behind Zoilo Versalles total of 275.

The 2006 equivalent of Zoilo Versalles winning the MVP would be if a player like Johnny Damon or Derek Jeter of the Yankees were named Most Valuable Player. They are catalysts that score runs, but the baseball writers who vote for the MVP nowadays put most of their stock in run production. The only player since 1990 in the high powered American League that was named MVP without knocking in one hundred runs was Ichiro Suzuki in 2001, and he had over 240 hits. If the 1965 vote was taken by today's standards, Zoilo Versalles would have been considered lucky to be in the top three behind Oliva, Horton, and Colavito. For instance, in 2003, Shannon Stewart of the Blue Jays, an offensive player closely resembling Zoilo Versalles, had an even better year than Zoilo Versalles had in his winning season, and finished a distant fourth in the balloting, well behind Alex Rodriguez of the last place Rangers.

The name of Zoilo Versalles sticks out like a sore thumb when you gaze down the list of MVP winners. The honor of being the first Latin player to be named MVP should have gone to Tony Oliva, and not to Zoilo Versalles.