Most Legendary Players

[frankbmd]

MARIO MENDOZA

A legend is a nonhistorical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.

Mario alone through his prowess in the batter's box defined mediocrity, both inside and outside baseball over 30 years ago. The Mendoza Line began as a clubhouse joke in 1979 when from mid April to mid May George Brett's batting average dropped from .341 on 4/17 to .244 on 5/11. Teammates chided Brett that his average was going to drop below the Mendoza Line in the Sunday newspaper's listing of major league batters (older members remember how the batters were listed by average in the Sunday papers before the internet). On May 11th Mendoza was batting .202 that year. I believe that .200 became the generic Mendoza line.

The legend of the Mendoza Line was popularized in the early days of ESPN by Chris Berman, who attributed the reference to Brett. Although the original Mendoza line in the Sunday newspaper may still be used to describe mediocrity in baseball, dropping below the Mendoza Line can be applied to mediocrity in any field and hence the legendary status of the term.

Interestingly Mendoza ended his career with a batting average of .215, somewhat above the generic Mendoza Line. He was also known to be an above average fielder.

With this background who can argue that the 1980 Mendoza card imaged below is not undervalued at 2 cents.