Joe Mauer, Todd Helton, Adrian Beltre, Jim Leyland enter Hall of Fame

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Joe Mauer closed out Sunday’s National Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony with 27 words that summarized the experience for he and his fellow honorees.

“To stand here today and say that I am now a small part of baseball history is a statement that will never fully sink in for me,” Mauer said.

Humility, a bit of disbelief and a connection between baseball’s past and present were the underlying themes for Mauer, Todd Helton, Adrian Beltre and Jim Leyland, all of whom were officially inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Clark Sports Center in this bucolic upstate town.

Mauer and Beltre were elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America in their first year on the ballot while Helton earned enshrinement in his sixth year of eligibility. Leyland was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era committee last December.

“Just standing back there, waiting to go up on to the stage, the guys are so kind, they all came by and offered me advice (saying), ‘Don’t worry about it, don’t be nervous, you got this,'” Helton said at a post-ceremony press conference. “And for me, that was the beginning of feeling like I belong.

“But we have a players-only dinner tonight and I’ll probably feel like I belong after that.”

Helton, who hit .316 with 369 homers in a 17-year career spent entirely with the Colorado Rockies, recalled growing up a fan of Hall of Famers Jim Kaat and Rod Carew because his late father, Jerry, played minor league ball with the Twins.

He also drew chuckles in the first speech of the afternoon when he said he’s still recognized around the University of Tennessee, his alma mater, for his brief stint backing up Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning on the football team.

“Every so often I’ll get, ‘Are you Todd Helton? Weren’t you a quarterback for the Vols?'” Helton said. “(He said) ‘Yes. But I played a little baseball since then.'”

Beltre, who collected 3,166 hits and became the third player to enter the Hall of Fame wearing a Texas Rangers hat, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for about $23,000 at age 15 in 1994.

Four years later, he received the news of his promotion from Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, who was serving as the Dodgers’ interim general manager, and began a career in which he established himself as one of the best all-around third basemen of all time as well as one of the most enthusiastic players in the game.

“Baseball is my passion,” Beltre said. “I love it. I love baseball and I have so much fun playing the game.”

Leyland, a career .222 hitter who never got above Double-A before he won 1,769 games with four teams and directed the Florida Marlins to a World Series win in 1997, elicited the biggest laughs of the day when he recalled a conversation with his wife, Katie, shortly after he was elected last December.

“I casually said, ‘Katie, can you believe in your wildest dreams that I’ve been elected to the Hall of Fame?'” Leyland said. “And Katie replied, ‘Jim, you’re not in my wildest dreams.'”

Leyland, who managed Hall of Famer Jack Morris as a minor league skipper with the Detroit Tigers in 1977, grew emotional at the end of his speech, when he said the spirit of the game is embodied in full stadiums and the sight of children getting their first autograph.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s you,” Leyland said. “That’s baseball.”

Mauer, a Minnesota native who spent his 15-year career with his hometown Twins and won three batting titles as a catcher before concussions forced him to move to first base, is the youngest Hall of Famer at 41 years old and the first one to debut in the 2000s.

He offered a glimpse at the potential future of the game by speaking to his son Chip, who was born two days after Mauer announced his retirement following the 2018 season.

“I now get to relive my childhood love of baseball through your eyes,” Mauer said. “Seeing your excitement as I watched you hold Babe Ruth’s bat at the museum back in January was a full-circle moment that brought me back to my days of pretending to be a big-leaguer in our backyard.

“I now get to coach your team and have car rides to and from games where we talk about how baseball is about so much more than winning and losing.”

Ichiro Suzuki, who finished with 3,089 hits despite not debuting in America until he was 27 years old, is expected to be a first-ballot inductee next year. He’ll be joined on the ballot by CC Sabathia, who won a Cy Young and a World Series while finishing with 251 victories and 3,093 strikeouts.

Longtime closer Billy Wagner, who came up five votes shy of the 75 percent necessary for induction in his penultimate year on the ballot, is the top returnee on the 2025 ballot.

–Jerry Beach, Field Level Media