Reliable studies indicate that good racemares produce more stakes winners than mediocre ones with sterling pedigrees.
On the contrary, great management creates sporting and business winners by raising the mediocre to good and the good to excellence.
LUCIE, Fla .— During his 11-year career in the major leagues, Rod Barajas has caught future Hall of Famers, Cy Young Award winners, the gifted, the mediocre, the terrible, and everyone in between.
Several of the 48 independent reviewers who vetted the initial 54 applications for the grants were surprised by some of the winners because they had awarded them mediocre scores.
Almost as traditionally, that winner has gone on to a mediocre or modestly successful career.
John Robertson used to love those passes before Brian Clough converted him from a mediocre central midfielder into a double European Cup winner on Nottingham Forest's left wing.
BEST PARANOID THRILLER: ZODIAC -- Like Verhoeven, David Fincher had been on extended hiatus since 2002's mediocre Panic Room, and he emerged with a winner.
In other sporting events, like the World Series, there is not infrequently the sense that the winner is merely the best of a mediocre field in a mediocre season.
But neither team has played like a pennant winner lately, resulting in a tight race among mediocre squads.
"I just feel consistently mediocre," said the British rider Bradley Wiggins, the multiple Olympic medal winner who finished fourth at last year's Tour but is in 18th place.
Because the quirky N.H.L. playoff format guarantees the division winners the top three seedings in each conference, no matter how mediocre the division.
