Mendoza Line
The Mendoza Line is baseball jargon for a .200 batting average, the supposed threshold for offensive futility at the Major League level.[1] It derives from light-hitting shortstop Mario Mendoza, who failed to reach .200 five times in his nine big league seasons.[2] When a position player's batting average falls below .200, the player is said to be "below the Mendoza Line".
Origin
Mendoza was a lightly used
When he had trouble staying above .200 in 1979, teammates began to chide him. "...
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 SportsCenters. It was just a humorous way to describe how someone was hitting."[3]
Mendoza ended up finishing 1979 below his own "line", at .198. His hitting improved modestly in 1980 and 1981, enough that even with another sub-.200 in his final season of 1982 he raised his career batting average to .215.[4]
Similar term
Another term used in baseball to indicate that a hitter is hitting below the Mendoza Line is that he is "on the interstate". It derives from the syntax of the U.S.
Use outside of baseball
The term is also used outside of baseball to convey a similar connotation of unacceptably subpar performance:
- "The U.S. 10-year note yield declined below 2%... before moving back above the Mendoza Line... to 2.09% by early afternoon."[5]
- "A sub-$2,000 per theater average... is the Mendoza Line of box office numbers..."[6]
- "Republican pollster Neil Newhouse... argues that these numbers have crossed below the political 'Mendoza line'..."[7]
- On an episode of How I Met Your Mother, Barney explains the "Vicky Mendoza Diagonal" line, which determines how attractive a girl must be in order for him to date her depending on how "crazy" she is.[8]
- In an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, Brandon and Steve's professor says "And look, if you've done the reading you don't have to worry, you will not fall below the Mendoza Line for a grade of a C." to which a student asks "Umm, the Mendoza Line? Was that in the chapters?"
- Then-Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton's play was described as defining the "Dalton Line", the minimum level of performance expected of a starting quarterback in the National Football League.[9]
References
- ^ "How did Mario Mendoza become a shorthand for batting futility?" on MLB.com
- Baseball-reference.com
- ^ Seminara, Dave (July 6, 2010). "Branded for life with 'The Mendoza Line'". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on September 4, 2022.
- Baseball-reference.com
- ^ Forsyth, Randall (August 18, 2011). "Fear Sends 10-Yr Treasury Under the Mendoza Line". Barron's. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
- ^ The Numbers - Even Horror Films Can't Survive the October of Terrors
- ^ Murray, Mark (June 13, 2007). "Republicans abandoning Bush". NBC News. Retrieved September 1, 2011.
- ^ Lasser, John (October 22, 2007). "'How I Met Your Mother': Crossing the line". Zap2It. Archived from the original on March 1, 2014. Retrieved February 23, 2014.
- ^ Ruiz, Steven (June 26, 2017). "The 'Dalton Line' All-Stars: Picking the most average NFL player starting at each position". USA Today. Retrieved August 23, 2020.
Further reading
- Pepper, Al (2002). Mendoza's Heroes: Fifty Batters Below .200. Pocol Press. ISBN 978-1929763115.
- Dickson, Paul (1999). The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0151003808.
