Up on the blog today, we have a "not so missing" 1981 card for
pinch-hitting legend Manny Mota, who was at the tail-end of a very nice
Major league career:
Mota only appeared in seven games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1980, going 3-for-7 at the plate as a 42-year-old pinch hitter.
The man was born to hit!
He
would collect just one more at-bat in his career two years later in
1982, but he certainly already made his mark in the Big Leagues, hitting
a career .304 over 1536 games dating back to his debut in 1962 with the
San Francisco Giants.
He would top the .300 mark in eleven of his 20 seasons, hitting as high as .332 in 1966, then with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Once
he landed in Los Angeles with the Dodgers in 1969, he became a fixture,
both on and off the field, a beloved figure in Dodger-land.
Overall,
he finished with 1149 hits over 3779 at-bats, making one All-Star team
(1973), before moving on to coaching, which encompassed an amazing
tenure that spanned 1980 through 2013.
A true baseball "lifer"!
