I grew up in Kensington and having a father who was an ardent Senators fan it did not take long for me to hop aboard the bandwagon. As early as third grade I would take the Evening Star and Daily News out of his hands when he walked in the door in the evening. Most likely I already knew who had won the game the night before but my interest was probably in studying the standings and the starting pitchers for that night.
My friends and I were not old enough to take the streetcar alone to Griffith Stadium so on weekends my dad would drive us to the park. He had permission to park in the Capital Transit garage across the street from the stadium. More importantly he knew how to find the players parking lot and where they exited after the game. Some players signed autographs while others could not get away fast enough and jumped into their cars or hailed taxi cabs.
One day in the summer of 1959 I found out that the Senators had called up Zoilo Versalles, a seventeen year old Cuban shortstop, from the minor leagues. He made his major league debut on August 1st going hitless against the White Sox. Sometime during that month my group, then old and wise enough to take the streetcar down Georgia Avenue, went to a day game. After the game we made our way to the players exit and soon we spotted Versalles probably because he was so young. He must not have owned a car because he left the lot, walked south on 7th Street, and onto Florida Avenue all the while being hounded by my friends. He seemed not to even notice us and he then entered a drug store on Florida Avenue trailed by a group of boys. In the end we did not get his autograph or even an acknowledgement. How were we to know that Zolio could not understand a thing that we were saying and possibly felt threatened by us because he did not know our motives?
Interestingly I discovered that during his second year with the Senators that Versalles married a sixteen year old Washington girl.
Years later I learned that Versalles had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the culture in the United States, never learned to speak English, and was generally miserable living in this country. When the Senators moved to Minneapolis Versalles went along and developed into a very good player. He sparked the Twins in 1965 and was named the Most Valuable Player in the American League. His decline started in 1968 and was selected by San Diego in the expansion draft. By 1972 he was playing in Japan. When that experiment failed he returned to the Twin Cities but because he had never learned English he was not able to work except for doing menial jobs.
By the end of his life he supported himself only by his social security benefits. He died alone in his house in 1995.
