The Pecan Park Eagle

~ THE MENDOZA LINE ~
Mario Mendoza’s career batting average has become the symbol of hitting futility over the past 30 years – but his actual career BA was .215 – not the .200 that most people think it was.

Bill Borst of St. Louis, a colleague, academic and baseball author, professor of history and founder of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society and Browns Fan Club is responsible for raising this very fair question: “Why do we think of .200 as the Mendoza Line for career terminal batting averages?”

~ BILL BORST ~
Advocate for Historical Correction

In the nine seasons ((1974-82) that MLB infielder Mario Mendoza played his way into legendary status as the icon for the dropping off place in fatally anemic hitting, he needed only 680 total games to establish his career batting average of .215 as “The Mendoza Line” of batting proficiency failure.

Yes, we said .215 lifetime – not the .200 mark that probably most people who’ve even heard of “The Mendoza Line” think it is?

What happened to encourage a standard that was not only .015 points above the shudder-land drop into ugly averages that begin at .199 on their potential descent to .000?

Borst argues that, if we are going to think .200 as the jumping off the gravy train point, that we ought to get it right that .215 and Mario Mendoza were never the best mark and model for the archetype of baseball batting failure.

Look no further than Bob Uecker for a better named patron saint of puny batting. Borst suggests the wonderfully funny former catcher and modern day baseball broadcasting winner of the Ford Frick Award and movie broadcasting celeb in “Major League” as the accurately “statified” (our Pecan Park Eagle new word for it) performer on point to such an onerous accolade.

~ BOB UECKER ~
The Uecker Line Nominee

Bob Uecker batted exactly .200 in a six-year (1962-67) 297-game catching career in the big leagues. His average alone speaks for the relative-to-Mendoza shorter length of his career – and for Borst’s recommendation that we start thinking of .200 as “The Uecker Line.”

Makes sense to me, except for the fact, right and wrong, that we’ve had 30 years to hear, read  and convince ourselves that “The Mendoza Line” and .200 are one and the same – which they measurably are not.

Bob Uecker might have made this possible comment on Mario Mendoza’s .215 average as the standard for a measurable hitting nadir in a career, had he been asked. If you remember Uecker’s call on that wide wild pitch in “Major League”:

“Mendoza gets the call – but it’s a tad high!”

Bill Borst describes “The Uecker Line” (.200) in these words:

“The Uecker Line”  signals career futility and a future that centers upon never having anything more than bad views and cars that break down.”

Thanks for a wonderful suggestion, Bill Borst, even if the weight of hearing “Mendoza Line” and .200 mentioned and written about together too often over the past three decades works against people’s resistance to abandoning their comfort zones, even when they are being asked to correct what was never true in the first place.

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