The National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2024 is now complete as Adrian Beltré, Todd Helton, Joe Mauer and Jim Leyland were inducted Sunday on the stage behind the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Beltré, Helton and Mauer were elected in January by eligible members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Beltré and Mauer the first time their names appeared on the writers’ ballot. Leyland, who managed multiple teams in his career, was the sole person elected in December off the eight-person ballot of the 16-member Contemporary Era Non-Players Committee.
Beltré appeared on 95.1% of the 394 ballots submitted, while Helton garnered 79.7% and Maurer had 76.1%, squeaking in by four votes. Billy Wagner missed the 75% threshold by five votes and should be elected next year when Ichiro Suzuki is expected to be a shoo-in his first time on the BBWAA ballot.
Sunday’s crowd was estimated by the Hall at 20,000, double last year’s figure, which should be dwarfed next summer on July 27 for the induction of Ichiro and perhaps CC Sabathia, another first-time candidate.
Beltré, with his 3,166 career hits, was only the 19th third baseman elected. Third base is the most underrepresented position in the Hall, just behind catcher, whose ranks added Maurer, the 21st Hall of Famer to spend his career mostly behind the plate.
But it’s the second consecutive year writers voted in a third baseman. Last year, Scott Rolen barely made it with his name on 76.3% of the 389 ballots cast. Joining him as an inductee last year was first baseman Fred McGriff, who was elected by an Era Committee.
Beltré played for four teams: the Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox. LA signed him as an international free agent from the Dominican Republic at 19 and he played his first seven seasons there.
He praised his managers and teammates on all of those teams, saying he learned a hard lesson early.
“You’re only as good as what you do on your next pitch,” he said. “Baseball was my passion and I truly loved it,” he said in conclusion.
Beltré hit a lot of good pitches, adding a .286 average and 477 homers to all those hits.
Helton, a first baseman who played his entire 17-year career for the Colorado Rockies, had a pretty good shot at being voted in; this was his sixth time on the ballot, missing the Class of 2023 by just 11 votes with 72.2%.
He follows Larry Walker by two years as the second Rockies player in the Hall of Fame, but first to play his entire career in Colorado where he hit .316 and amassed 2,519 hits and 369 homers.
Helton told the crowd on the seats and lawns around him that he was a creature of habit as a player and that his “superstitions were excessive.”
“It made sense to nobody but me,” he said.
He told a story about traveling to play in nearby Colorado Springs only to get a speeding ticket along the way. He swatted three hits that day.
The next day … “I took the same route, went the same speed and the same officer gave me the same ticket,” Helton recalled. “I didn’t care. I got three hits that day as well. I asked the officer to meet me the third day and he indulged me.”
Mauer was the only American League catcher to win a batting title, capturing three of them. He played his entire 15-year career with the hometown Minnesota Twins, batting .306 and catching 921 games before his knees began to break down.
“For as long as I can remember baseball has had a central part of my life and the life of my family,” Maurer, a local native of St. Paul, Minn., and the seventh Twin to enter the Hall, said in his opening.
Later he spoke about how tough a game it is to play and be successful.
“Baseball is about so much more than winning or losing,” he said. “Playing this game takes grit. It teaches the important lessons of hard work, patience and dedication. In baseball you will inevitably fail a lot more than succeed. You’re going to need to adjust and it’s going to be tough. These are all values I want to instill in my children.”
Leyland joined three managerial contemporaries in the Hall. Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox were all inducted in 2014. Leyland won the World Series with the 1997 Florida Marlins and took the Detroit Tigers into the World Series twice, losing to La Russa’s St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 and future Hall of Famer Bruce Bochy and the San Francisco Giants in 2012. His Team USA in 2017 is the only U.S. club to win the World Baseball Classic.
He was known for his great old-school baseball acumen and his explosive temper.
Andy Van Slyke, who played center field for him in Pittsburgh, said in a presentation video that Leyland once yelled at him as a young player for striking out too much.
“He called me Andy Van Strikeout,” Van Slyke recalled.
Leyland, choking back tears throughout his speech, thanked every player who played for him in the majors or the minors.
“Because I wouldn’t be here without you,” he said.
He’s now there along with the current trio of players as the 23rd manager, making it a total of 346 members of the red-bricked museum on Main Street–274 of them players.
