Editing Mendoza Line (section)

==Origin==
Mendoza was a lightly used [[shortstop]] from [[Chihuahua, Chihuahua|Chihuahua, Mexico]], who played for three franchises during a nine-season [[Major League Baseball]] career. While his fielding was highly regarded, his hitting was not. His batting average was between .180 and .199 in five seasons out of nine.

When he had trouble staying above .200 in 1979, teammates began to chide him. "...[[Tom Paciorek]] and [[Bruce Bochte]] used it to make fun of me," Mendoza said in 2010. "Then they were giving [[George Brett (baseball)|George Brett]] a hard time because he had a slow start that year, so they told him, 'Hey, man, you're going to sink down below the Mendoza Line if you're not careful.' And then Brett mentioned it to [[Chris Berman]] from [[ESPN]], and eventually it spread and became a part of the game."

Berman deflects credit back to Brett in popularizing the term. "Mario Mendoza — it's all George Brett," Berman said. "We used it all the time in those 1980s ''[[SportsCenter]]s''. It was just a humorous way to describe how someone was hitting."<ref>{{cite news |url= http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_cff05af5-032e-5a29-b5a8-ecc9216b0c02.html |title=Branded for life with 'The Mendoza Line' |first=Dave |last=Seminara |date=July 6, 2010 |work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220904005015/https://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_cff05af5-032e-5a29-b5a8-ecc9216b0c02.html |archive-date=September 4, 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Mendoza ended up finishing 1979 below his own "line", at .198.  His hitting improved modestly in 1980 and 1981; he improved enough that, even with another sub-.200 in his final season of 1982, he raised his career batting average to .215.<ref>[https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mendoma01.shtml "Mario Mendoza"] on [[Baseball-reference.com]]</ref>

However, Mendoza hit ''exactly'' .200 in the post-season, going 1-for-5 in 3 games with Pittsburgh in the [[1974 NLCS]].

Mendoza returned to his native land in 1983 and played seven seasons in the [[Mexican League]], and achieved a more than respectable .291 career batting average in that league.