Evan Mendoza

From pitching baseballs to pitching NFTs

NFT DROP ON FOUNDATION

May 3rd, 2021 at 4pm CDT

I was born in Baltimore Maryland and grew up mostly in Sarasota, Florida. During my years in middle school, my family and I moved often, back-and-forth between Maryland and Florida. This created an instability in my social life as I never really had one place to call home or the opportunity to form deep relationships with my peers. This also brought my family closer to one another.

I started playing baseball when I was four years old and played a few years of Little League before starting travel ball. I simply love the game, love to get better every day, and truly enjoy the time spent with my older brother who has helped me train and work out.

Our entire family grew up Baltimore Oriole fans which is the hometown team and Camden yards was my first big league ball park I ever went to a game when I was around five years old.

Growing up, I was a huge fan of Adam Jones and can say that he is one of the first people to inspire and awaken the creativity within me. Jones always had custom cleats and motivated me to paint my own pair of old cleats too that I played in religiously until they started to chip in high school.

The inspiration and creativity didn’t stop there, it only grew. It led me to creating the majority of digital concept designs for a custom cleat customizer named Stadium Custom Kicks.

My creativity is what has drawn me to the NFT space and since entering it, I have learned a lot from my spring training teammate, Matt Szczur. Matt and I have a lot in common. He has a 2016 World Championship under his belt but he is also very creative like myself. He took me under his wing and explained how to get into the NFT space and I did just that, seizing the opportunity.

During my freshman year of high school, I attended Severna Park High School. We had an unbelievably talented team and even though I was a freshman on varsity, I pitched very well and also played a very solid shortstop.

My head coach Jim Mccandless was my idol. Him putting me on varsity, trusting me, and giving me confidence throughout practices and games made me draw a very close connection with him. He was way more than a coach, you could even say a catalyst into me becoming the player that I am today.

I made it to the state championship game during my freshman year and was named the starting pitcher. During the practice before that game, Coach Mccandless printed out the transcript of Jimmy V’s ESPYs speech and read it to the entire team. I did not know who Jimmy V was nor North Carolina State University.

Long story short, I did terribly on the mound in that state championship game and we lost the game. We were all heartbroken.

Fast forward to September in my sophomore year, an old teammate from Maryland reached out to me and told me the heartbreaking news - Coach Mccandless took his own life. He had two daughters, one of them was only a few months old and I never got any closure from that. He didn’t leave a note or anything.

Around my Junior and Senior year of high school, I started getting in contact with some colleges. I reached out and was interested in colleges that had the major I was interested in studying, aerospace engineering. A lot of good baseball programs reached out to me but I was smart even as a highschooler and I understood there was more than baseball. I used my brains as a Plan B if baseball didn’t work out.

When I went on my unofficial visit to NC State in Raleigh North Carolina, I loved everything about it. I also learned that Coach Mccandless and Coach Avent (NC State Head Coach) were on the same coaching staff when they both coached for New Mexico state university.

I just felt like this was my home.

After the visit my family and I went to a local mall in Raleigh where a special song was playing. Coach Mccandless during BP would love to listen to 70s and 80s music. One of the songs that I vividly remember is the song September by Earth, Wind, and Fire. I started to tear up a little bit because that song was playing in the background at a local store.

That’s when I knew North Carolina State was going to be the university I attend.

I worked extremely hard to earn a position but my sophomore year I was blocked by a senior at third base. I earned that position but unfortunately somethings don’t play out the way you want. So I had to be patient and wait about 10 games for my first opportunity. After that, I took off and absolutely started dominating the ACC. I went on to hit around 360 that year. And then I got drafted by the Cardinals my junior year. The rest is history.

“Don’t give up, don’t ever give up”

My inspiration:

I started with a simple helmet and let my creativity take over. As I was creating, I thought back to the time I got hit in the head by a ball and that’s what inspired the shatter part of the helmet. I also broke my wrist 2x in 2019 ending my season. The helmet represents my body and how precious it really is. The background comes from always loving the water, especially the beach. At my home in palm beach I always enjoy eating lunch out on the dock watching the waves and seeing the boats and yachts pass by.

As I was creating and brainstorming ideas for filling the subject, Jimmy V came to my mind. I was watching ESPN as background noise and that’s when the Jimmy V 30 for 30 came on and that’s also when everything came together. “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up. I’m going to have a Jimmy V inspired NFT,” I thought to myself.

While listening to his speech, one part stuck out to me the most.

“Try if you can to support, so that someone else might survive, might prosper and might actually cured of this dreaded disease.”

I then said to myself I CAN support! Maybe not with my dollars but my art can. So I decided to donate 100% of proceeds to the V Foundation for cancer research.

The V Foundation is the foundation that Jimmy V started while he was battling cancer himself which he announced during his 1993 ESPYs speech. It would be an incredible dream come true for me if some new research comes out from the money we raised, and even saved one life. We cannot and will not learn if we do not research. We have to fund this.

Who would have known that the same speech my Coach read to me years before would be the inspiration behind my NFT? I certainly did not but am so grateful that it is