César Leonardo Tovar (July 3, 1940 – July 14, 1994), nicknamed "Pepito" and "Mr. Versatility", was a Venezuelan professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from to , most notably as the leadoff hitter for the Minnesota Twins teams that won two consecutive American League Western Division titles in 1969 and 1970. He later played for the Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, and New York Yankees. Although he was a small player, listed at 5-feet-9 and 150 pounds, he was muscular and tough-bodied. Tovar played baseball with such speed and aggressiveness that manager Billy Martin considered him one of his favorite players. He was also a very good contact hitter, striking out only 7% of the time he appeared at the plate as a major league player.
Baseball playing career
Minor leagues
Tovar was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, where as a child, he shined shoes to earn extra income for his family. That winter, he returned to Venezuela to play for the Leones del Caracas, and won the league's rookie of the year award.
The Reds had a promising second baseman in Pete Rose, who would win the 1963 National League Rookie of the Year Award, with future Gold Glover Cookie Rojas on the bench and second basemen Bobby Klaus and Gus Gil in their minor league system, there was little room left for Tovar to progress. The Twins were in first place with two games left in the season, but lost their final two games to the Red Sox and finished the season in second place.
Tovar played an integral role as a utility player during the Twins' 1967 pennant run, dividing his playing time between third base (70 games), center field (64), second baseman (36), left field (10), shortstop (9) and right field (5). He set an American League record of 164 games played (the Twins had two tie games in the 1967 season) and led the league with 726 plate appearances and 649 at-bats. He was also among the top 10 batters in runs, hits, doubles, triples, stolen bases, hit by pitch and sacrifice hits.
On September 22, 1968, Tovar became the second player after Bert Campaneris (Kansas City Athletics, 1965) to play all nine fielding positions in a game. The two were later joined by Scott Sheldon (Texas Rangers, 2000), Shane Halter (Detroit Tigers, 2000), and Andrew Romine (Detroit Tigers, 2017) as the only five players in MLB history to have accomplished the feat. Tovar started the game on the mound against Oakland and pitched one scoreless inning in which he struck out Reggie Jackson. As fate would have it, the first batter he faced was Campaneris.