Don't miss our exclusive FSU sports coverage. Get your 30-day Free Trial

Manny and Rebecca Mendoza know everything there is to know about team sports -- both from their own playing experiences to those of their two Division-I athlete children.

So while it was their son, Drew, who delivered the game-winning hit in the 12th inning of Florida State's Super Regional-winning, CWS berth-clinching victory over LSU last Sunday in Baton Rouge, La., the Mendozas are quick to dismiss any notion that he was the "hero" of that historic night.

Sure, he drove in the winning run. But the scoring opportunity was only made possible by senior Mike Salvatore reaching base on a one-out single and taking second on a wild pitch. And the Seminoles were only still in the game at that point thanks to junior pitcher Antonio Velez's brilliant four-plus innings of relief.

Rebecca Mendoza makes all of these points with conviction.

And after LSU tied the game at 4-4 in the eighth, the Mendozas insist they believed in their hearts that every Florida State batter who stepped to the plate would be the one who put the Seminoles back on top. That Drew's contribution wouldn't even be needed.

When their son did come up to bat, of course, the emotions were a little different. Especially in the 12th inning.

There was a mixture of hope and trepidation.

Manny and Rebecca knew he could come through in the clutch; they had seen him do it countless times in numerous sports. But they also understand how cruel baseball can be. And they didn't want him to feel like he let down his teammates and coaches with so much on the line.

As it turned out, they had nothing to worry about. Facing a 2-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the 12th, Mendoza ripped a single to right field, drove in Salvatore for the 5-4 victory and propelled the Seminoles back to the College World Series.

"I'm not sure that I've even realized it yet," Rebecca said of the significance of her son's huge hit. "When Mikey came around and touched home plate ... the elation was pretty extreme. Elation would be a good word for it."

"Elation and relief," said Manny.

Like all parents, the Mendozas likely experience some measure of those emotions in each of Drew's games. But this was no ordinary game.

A victory would not only send FSU back to the College World Series for the 23rd time, it would give Drew and several other Seminoles a second trip to Omaha in three years. And it would mean Mike Martin, Florida State's legendary head coach, would get one last opportunity to compete for that elusive national championship.

At the very least, with this being his 40th and final season, it guaranteed that Martin's final game would come in the College World Series -- after a regular season when that appeared closer to impossible than improbable.

"It was meant to happen I guess," Rebecca said.

There are many elements of Florida State's run to the College World Series, which begins tonight against No. 5 national seed Arkansas (7 p.m., ESPN), that have a storybook feel.

There's the Martin aspect. The improbable journey of outfielder Tim Becker, a walk-on who spent the past three years on FSU's club baseball team before becoming a postseason standout. And the stunning turnaround of a Seminole squad that seemed lost for long stretches of 2019 only to steamroll through the first two rounds of the postseason.

For the Mendozas, the story begins more than 30 years ago on the Florida State campus.

At the time, Manny was a student in FSU's hospitality program, working his way through school by refereeing intramural games in the evenings. Rebecca was a marketing major who also happened to be a standout in flag football and other sports.

He had grown up in Miami; she was born and raised about four hours north in Clermont. The pair still remember where they first laid eyes on each other. They were on FSU's old intramural fields, just a short walk from Dick Howser Stadium, where Drew has starred for the past three years.

"She was a very good athlete," Manny said. "What caught my eye was how athletic she was, and the fact that she was 6 foot tall. They don't come that size in Miami (laughing)."

Rebecca and Manny were, in fact, both very good athletes.

She was an All-State basketball player at Clermont High and was eventually encouraged to walk-on to the Florida State women's team by then-head coach Janice Dykehouse's staff. Rebecca went through a tryout as a sophomore and actually made the team, but later decided to focus on academics.

"It was a great experience," she said. "It was fun, but I wanted to focus on my studies."

Manny played high school basketball as well and loved baseball. He, too, at one point had aspirations of playing for the Seminoles, although it didn't work out for different reasons.

The year was 1983, and Manny had just transferred into FSU after two years at Miami-Dade Community College. He found out about walk-on tryouts for the FSU baseball team, and he remembers reporting to Howser Stadium and seeing a young head coach by the name of Mike Martin sitting in a folding chair, watching each player run through drills.

"I've never told Coach Martin about this, but I tried out for the team," Manny said with a laugh. "And back then, you would go to the baseball field the next day and see if your name was on the list. My name wasn't on it."

It might have been the only major disappointment Manny experienced in Tallahassee. It would not only be where he earned his degree, but where he met the love of his life. And the memories are identically positive for Rebecca.

Over the next three decades, as they would begin their careers and develop a long-lasting love for Florida State University, they would return to campus at least a couple times each year. The trips got tougher to swing as their children grew older and participated in competitive sports -- Drew's older sister, Alex, played volleyball for four years at USF -- but they always made it back for the occasional football game and other events.

"We were not those people who were here every weekend, because our kids played sports," Rebecca said. "But our hearts were always with FSU."

Mike Martin Jr. laughs when he hears the question: When did Drew Mendoza first show up on your radar?

"This is a good one," the Seminoles' longtime assistant coach says.

Martin Jr. and longtime friend and rival J.D. Artaega, who is a veteran assistant coach at the University of Miami, were scouting a travel baseball tournament about 45 minutes outside of Atlanta.

Neither one had ever heard of Drew Mendoza -- then about to enter his sophomore year of high school -- and they certainly didn't know that his parents were lifelong 'Noles. What they witnessed that day was a tall, lanky baseball player -- a pitcher, no less -- simply oozing with talent.

"He was without a doubt, at that age, the most polished arm we had ever seen," Martin Jr. said. "We both offered him right away."

Though he primarily played shortstop back then and throughout high school, Mendoza was a natural on the mound. He was already throwing in the mid- to high-80s, he had three pitches he could throw for strikes, and there was no telling what he could become when he grew into his 6-foot, 5-inch frame.

"We were both like, 'Oh my gosh, that's how you draw it up,'" Martin Jr. said. "To this day, every single time I run into J.D. Artaega, one of the first things he asks is, 'Is he pitching yet?'

"We still joke about it."

That steamy Atlanta afternoon got a whole lot better for Martin Jr. a short time later when he met Rebecca Mendoza for the first time.

"He didn't know who we were, but Drew pitched really well that day," Rebecca recalled this week. "I told him to say hi to Bernie Waxman for us."

Waxman, who is the Seminoles' assistant athletics director for facilities and event management, was Manny's supervisor in the FSU intramurals department back in the early '80s.

Within a year, Drew Mendoza was committed to Florida State.

Though both of their children have played college sports at the highest levels, Manny and Rebecca Mendoza have never longed for the limelight.

They often lurk high in the stands at Dick Howser Stadium, taking in the action from a bird's-eye view. And while they read articles about their son and watch his video interviews online, they take all of it -- the good and the bad -- in stride.

Well, almost all of it.

There is one thing that has been written and said about Drew for the last three years that the Mendozas would like to correct: He never turned down a $3.5 million signing bonus to attend Florida State. He never asked for a $3.5 million signing bonus, either.

"That's not correct," Rebecca says emphatically.

"Not correct at all," Manny says even more emphatically.

That's not to say the rumors and reports weren't understandable.

After devoting his full attention to playing infield and developing as a left-handed power hitter, Drew had blossomed into one of the nation's top prospects. If he had wanted to make the jump immediately into professional baseball, he likely would have gone in the first round.

Drew didn't ignore the possibility altogether. And at the urging of his parents, he went through the pre-draft process with several major-league teams. He asked questions about life in the minor leagues. About the towns he might be playing in and the travel. About the type of instruction he would receive.

As an 18-year-old, none of it sounded very appealing.

"We did not tell him to go to college," Rebecca said. "But Drew looked every team in the face and said, 'I am 99 percent sure that I want to go to college.'"

Pro scouts hear that all the time, of course. Dozens of high school stars each year will proclaim their desire to go to college, with the intent of driving up their asking price. It's so common that the first question the Mendozas heard from practically every team was, "What's your number?"

As in, how much would it take for Drew to sign out of high school.

"We didn't have a number," Manny said. "Because he truly wanted to be a Seminole."

A couple of days before the 2016 draft, several teams reached out once again to make sure.

"He told them, I'm going to college," Rebecca said. "So there were no offers made."

"More than, 'I'm going to college,'" Manny interjected. "It was, 'I'm going to be a Seminole. Period. The end.'"

Despite posting great individual statistics throughout his three years -- and especially this season (16 home runs, 56 RBIs and a .319 batting average) -- Drew Mendoza's Florida State career has not been perfect.

After a very strong debut season that saw him earn second-team Freshman All-America honors and come through with huge hits on the biggest stages -- he blasted two home runs in the ACC championship game against North Carolina and two more homers in the College World Series -- Mendoza's sophomore campaign ended in despair.

The Seminoles entered the 2018 postseason as a top-eight national seed before being stunned in their own NCAA Regional. They were shocked by Samford in the opening round and then eliminated one day later by Mississippi State.

Then Mendoza's junior season appeared to be heading toward an even more disappointing fate. After being ranked in the Top 10 of every major poll early in the year, the Seminoles went on one of the worst slides of Mike Martin's 40-year tenure. At one point, they won just 7 of 20 games and appeared to be in danger of missing the postseason.

It was perhaps the first prolonged bout with failure Mendoza had ever experienced.

Back home at Lake Minneola High School, he enjoyed almost immediate success, playing on district championship teams in three sports -- baseball, basketball and golf -- as just a sophomore. Not only was he a phenom in baseball, but he once scored 28 points in a high school basketball game against national powerhouse Montverde Academy -- in a year when Montverde was led by future NBA first-round picks Ben Simmons and D'Angelo Russell.

"Drew was mostly a spot-up shooter on a very good team that made the state championship game, so it's not like he was being guarded by the No. 1 overall pick (Simmons)," Manny said. "Still, he scored 28 points in that game."

So, losing like Florida State was losing for much of 2019 was an entirely new experience.

"There was some self-doubt, I guess you'd call it," Mendoza said on Tuesday, one day before the Seminoles left for Omaha. "But within the team, there was never any doubt. Confidence in each other. Trust in each other. Trust in the coaching staff. The goal never changed, no matter what our record was at the time. Our sights were set on Omaha the entire time."

FSU showed enough improvement in the final six weeks of the season to grab one of the last four spots in the 64-team NCAA tournament. And since then, they have been arguably the most impressive group in the postseason, going on the road and sweeping four straight games against SEC powers Georgia and LSU.

They have now won their last six games by a combined margin of 57-19.

From listening to the words of head coach Mike Martin Sr. and assistant coach Mike Martin Jr., that turnaround likely never would have happened if not for Mendoza. His impact, they say, went far beyond his powerful bat -- and it was felt long before his game-winning hit in Baton Rouge.

During his pre-College World Series press conference on Friday, Martin Sr. explained that Mendoza led a players-only meeting late in the year that woke the struggling Seminoles out of their slumber.

"Drew is our captain," the head coach said. "I think he just saw that there was a need for something to transpire, and he took the bull by the horns. The nice thing about it is the entire team looked up to him. It wasn't somebody that some of the guys were just not really sold out to. ... Mendoza is a guy they're all sold out to, the way he plays, the way he conducts himself on and off the field. A great leader."

Said Martin Jr: "He's not afraid to open his mouth. He's a very smart guy. He's a positive guy as well, which is big during tough times. He's given us everything we've ever dreamed of."

As Florida State prepares to open play in the CWS, the final chapter of this story has yet to be written.

Mendoza was selected in the third round of the MLB Draft earlier this month by the Washington Nationals, which means he almost certainly will be moving on to professional baseball. That's not set in stone -- there are details that will need to be negotiated -- but Mendoza already has accomplished more than most baseball players can ever hope to in college.

Because he entered FSU with more than 30 college credits, he needs just nine more hours to receive his bachelor's degree in statistics. He has been to the College World Series twice in three years. And he ripped the RBI single that gave a coaching legend one last chance to win that elusive national championship.

Whatever happens now, it has been one heck of a garnet-and-gold ride.

"He never gave up hope," Rebecca said of her son's attitude during the tough times this season. "I remember we were sitting at an open-air restaurant in Miami, and he said, 'You know what I want more than anything else in the world? I want a national championship.'"

"It is pretty special," Manny said. "It's a great story. Like Drew has said, Coach Martin deserves to have his career end in Omaha. And maybe my son's college career is going to end in Omaha too."

------------

Discuss this story with other FSU fans on our Seminole Baseball Message Board