Zoilo Versalles Marquee

In 1965 he led the league in runs with 126, in doubles with 45 and in triples with 12, hit 19 home runs, stole 27 bases and won a Gold Glove at shortstop for a Minnesota club that won 102 games and the pennant. The Most Valuable Player award came with 275 points of 280 and 19 of the 20 first-place votes. He was the first player born in Cuba to win it.

He was twenty-five that year and nothing after it went right. Back trouble started in 1966, his average fell to .200 in 1967, and Minnesota traded him that winter. He played for four clubs in four seasons and was finished at thirty-one with 1,246 hits and a .242 average.

He had left Havana at nineteen speaking no English and homesick enough that Washington nearly sent him back. He worked in a factory after baseball, sold his Most Valuable Player award and his Gold Gloves to pay bills, and died in Bloomington, Minnesota, in 1995, at fifty-five. No Hall of Fame ballot ever listed him.