Beltré, Mauer, Helton, Leyland inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame (2024)

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Two of them were the faces of their franchises, batting champs who debuted with their teams and never left. A third flashed his Gold Glove artistry in L.A., Seattle and Boston, then found a special home in Texas. The fourth was a beloved managerial icon.

For Joe Mauer and Todd Helton, for Adrián Beltré and Jim Leyland, their baseball journeys spanned every time zone in North America. Then their roads converged on a stage in Cooperstown on the same magical Sunday, the day they were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

So here’s a look at their paths to this moment and highlights from their speeches in Cooperstown.

Beltré’s Hall of Fame case

You know how many third basem*n are hanging around Planet Earth with more than 3,100 hits and five Gold Glove Awards? Exactly one: Adrián Beltré. No wonder he just sailed into Cooperstown in his first year on the ballot, with the same percentage of the vote (95.1) as Babe Ruth.

Has there ever been a player quite like Beltré who stood on that podium in Cooperstown? You’d be shocked by how easy it is to argue no on that.

Welcome to baseball immortality, Adrian Beltré. pic.twitter.com/M7SsPzV4BS

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) July 21, 2024

Who else did all the things that Beltré did? Won five Gold Gloves … got 3,166 hits … won a home run title … and finished his career with more than 90 wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference?

It won’t take long to run through this list. Here’s every Hall of Famer with those offensive credentials, who even won any Gold Gloves:

Willie Mays
Henry Aaron
Carl Yastrzemski
Adrián Beltré

That’s already a cool group. But now let’s ask: How many Hall of Famers did that while playing the balance of their career in the infield? That answer: just one — Adrián Beltré.

As a hitter, Beltré had the unusual distinction of being more productive in his 30s (.303/.353/.503) than in his 20s (.273/.328/.462). But for two decades, it was his artful leatherwork at third base that separated him from every third baseman of his generation.

Let’s use Baseball Reference’s Career Fielding Runs above average as a tool to measure Beltré’s brilliance. You know what that metric tells us? That Beltré was merely the greatest defensive third baseman ever who was not named Brooks Robinson. That seems good.

But combine the spectacular defense with his membership in the 3,000-Hit Club — and he joins this elite company:

3,000+ HITS, 200+ FIELDING RUNS

So when Beltré was asked, after his election last January, about how he felt to be mentioned alongside the legends he now joins in the plaque gallery, he found it all hard to grasp.

“I’m honored to be in the Hall of Fame,” he said. “It’s something that I never even dream of. … I can’t believe that I’m going to be on the same podium with those guys. It’s just something that I can’t even fathom right now.”

Beltré’s path to election

Sometimes, Hall of Fame vote totals tell us all we need to know. Only four third basem*n in history reeled in as high a percentage of the vote as Adrián Beltré. You’ve heard of them.

Of the 385 writers who voted last winter, only 19 left Beltré off their ballots. That also tells us something, considering that even after all these years, no position player has ever been elected unanimously. Brett came closest of those third basem*n, missing by nine votes. Chipper was 12 short. Schmidt missed by 16.

It’s so tempting to ask, even now, what reason any sensible voter could possibly have had to not vote for Beltré (or any of those other three third-base legends). But when the time arrived Sunday for him to stand on that stage, all that matters is the unforgettable words he heard on election day in January:

Adrián Beltré, welcome to Cooperstown.

Best moment from Beltré’s HOF speech

Beltré played baseball with so much joy. So he made sure to express that joy, in a playful, heartfelt speech which he admitted afterward was “25 percent improvised.”

“Baseball was my passion and blessed me with countless opportunity,” he said. “And the best part was, I love it. I love baseball. And I had so much fun playing the game.”

But the most memorable part of Beltré’s speech came before he ever uttered a word. As he arrived at the podium after posing with his plaque, his friend David Ortiz sneaked up behind him and did that thing Beltré would never let his teammates do over his two-decade career: touch his head.

Asked if that moment helped to relax him, Beltré flashed his ever-present smile.

“It’s never relaxing,” he said. “It was a little cute to go back to my days when I was playing. … But it’s just part of being part of this fraternity of players. So even though I don’t love it, I don’t like it, I feel like I’m open to people being able to play around with me. I always like that. So Big Papi and I, we go way back, before he even signed the contract. So it was no problem today.”

Mauer’s Hall of Fame case

Once upon a time, a little over two decades ago, Joe Mauer was the first pick in the 2001 MLB Draft. That place atop the draft has rarely turned out to be a ticket to Cooperstown. But it all worked out perfectly for this man, because he was one of the greatest No. 1 picks ever.

In fact, you won’t find any No. 1 pick with a story like Mauer’s: Grew up in Minnesota. … Drafted No. 1 in Minnesota. … Never played a single game in his career for a team other than Minnesota. … And he and Chipper Jones are the only No. 1 overall picks in history to spend their whole careers with the team that drafted them, while playing at least 500 games in the big leagues.

But after draft day, Joe Mauer took it from there. He won three batting titles — one more than all the other No. 1 picks in history combined — and more than any catcher in American League/National League history.

What made Mauer’s case so tricky, however, was the series of concussions that forced him to stop catching and divided his career into two distinct periods.

Like Ernie Banks at shortstop, Mauer spent the first half of his career as a historically great offensive player at a defense-first position (catcher). But in the second half of his career, he was a first baseman with waning power at a bat-first position, again like Banks.

So there were questions about whether voters would look at Mauer’s 10 seasons as a catcher and weigh them more heavily than those years at first base. On election day, those voters gave us their verdict: As a catcher, this man was a clearcut Hall of Famer. Here’s why:

He was one of the best hitting catchers ever — Name any other catcher who had a 10-year stretch like Mauer’s 2004-13 peak, with three batting titles and a .323/.405/.469/.873 slash line. Don’t rack your brain for another because only one catcher ever had a peak like that: Joseph P. Mauer.

He was the best catcher of his generation — But think beyond the bat. Let’s look at wins above replacement, because that measures everything. And where did Mauer rank in Baseball Reference WAR in his 10 seasons as his team’s primary catcher, compared with all the other catchers who were active in all 10 of those seasons? No one was even close.

Joe Mauer — 44.6
Victor Martinez — 28.1
Yadier Molina — 27.6
Jorge Posada — 20.0

So of course Mauer will be in Cooperstown on Induction Weekend. But he has been there before — two years ago, in fact, for the induction of two other Twins greats: Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat. So trying to comprehend that this time, he’s the one in the spotlight, has been overwhelming, he said in a Zoom news conference last week.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of emotions going,” he said. “And that’s OK, right? It’s an unbelievable honor, and I’m just so thrilled, excited, nervous. I mean, there’s a lot of emotions leading up to this day.”

Mauer’s path to election

We went into this election in January with questions about whether Mauer would attract enough votes to get elected on his first try. Instead, he came out of that balloting with the second-highest first-ballot vote percentage of any catcher in history. Who knew!

Here’s that leaderboard:

In other words, Mauer got more votes in his first year on the ballot than Yogi Berra. And you can be sure that’s not a commentary on Berra. It’s a commentary on how bizarre voting has always been for guys who wore masks and shinguards for a living.

If you don’t count the designated hitter, a position that has existed for only a half-century, no position had accumulated fewer first-ballot Hall of Famers than catcher … until Joe Mauer came along.

Best moment from Mauer’s HOF speech

Mauer has lived a one-of-a-kind Hall of Fame story — a Minnesota kid whose entire Hall of Fame journey was carved out in his very own home town of St. Paul. So in a characteristically modest, personal speech, Mauer made it a point to let people know that nothing in his baseball life meant more to him than that.

“I wanted to be a Twin from Day 1,” he said. “And that decision never wavered in 18 years. Thank you for that opportunity and your belief, and for supporting me through it all. It was truly an honor to be a part of your organization and represent my hometown team.”

Helton’s Hall of Fame case

If Todd Helton had spent 17 seasons playing anywhere else in baseball, he undoubtedly would have been basking in his Hall of Fame induction day a long time ago. But he spent all those seasons playing a mile above sea level, in scenic Colorado. And clearly, that induced a severe case of altitude sickness — among Hall of Fame voters.

This was Helton’s incredible statistical slash line over those 17 seasons: .316/.414/.539/.953. Now here are all the NL/AL hitters, whose careers began since 1930, who have topped that:

Ted Williams
Stan Musial

And that’s a wrap on that list. But Helton also won three Gold Glove Awards. And made five All-Star Game appearances in a row. And won a batting title. And became the only hitter ever to string together back-to-back seasons with 100 extra-base hits.

So if any of that had gone on literally anywhere other than the Mountain Time Zone, the term we’d be using to describe Todd Helton is first-ballot Hall of Famer. Instead, he needed Larry Walker (in 2020) to pave the road to Cooperstown for every Rockies player who ever set foot in Coors Field. And even then, it took four more years for voters to figure this out.

There are lots of statistical tools nowadays to help us understand how to put those skewed Colorado numbers in perspective. But in retrospect, we really didn’t need any of them. We just had to take a hard look at Helton’s numbers on the road during his prodigious 10-year peak, from 1998-2007.

Over those 10 years, Helton’s slash line not at Coors Field was .296/.395/.504/.899, with more walks than strikeouts. If we compare that with everyone in baseball who played in all 10 of those seasons — and then disqualify anybody ever linked to performance-enhancing drugs — we find only two other hitters with a road slash line that good: Chipper Jones and the eternally underrated Lance Berkman.

So the case for Helton was always there, always so obvious to anyone who took the time to look for it. But six elections later, it’s Todd Helton’s induction day.

“You know, I can’t put it into words what it means,” he said last week in a news conference. “I don’t feel like a Hall of Famer. I’ll put it that way. And hopefully, when I get up there and be around those guys, I hope I feel like I belong, because there’s plenty of my heroes up there. And for me, it’s a dream. I don’t want to be too cheesy, but it’s a dream come true.”

Helton’s path to election

He knew this wouldn’t be easy … because Coors Field.

What was wild about Helton’s road to Cooperstown was what happened after Larry Walker got elected — and seemingly busted the Coors Curse.

That was 2020. Helton was already two frustrating elections into his time on this ballot. And it wasn’t going smoothly. After Year 1 (when he polled at only 16.5 percent), he was still nearly 250 votes short. After Year 2 (29.2 percent), he was still 172 votes away. Then the ballot opened up, and he caught fire.

In only four years, he rocketed from 70 votes to 281, and from 16.5 percent to 72.2 percent. In 2023, he added a remarkable 79 votes in one year, leaving him only 11 votes away. But just when you thought he’d cruise to election, he picked up only 26 votes in the 2024 balloting.

That was one of the smallest bumps ever by a guy who had come that close the year before. But he still cleared that 75 percent bar for election — by 18 votes. So when the voting dust settled, he was a Hall of Famer, and he was up there on that podium Sunday, soaking in that inimitable Cooperstown love.

Best moment from Helton’s HOF speech

Helton was nervous about his speech for weeks. But he said afterward that the support and advice he got from his fellow Hall of Famers backstage Sunday helped settle those nerves. He then delivered an upbeat, entertaining speech, filled with great stories about everything from playing quarterback at Tennessee to his nutty superstitions.

Those superstitions, he said, may have seemed like typical ballplayer stuff — eating the same food, following the same routines — but he was not about to let them go. So one day, when he was playing minor-league baseball at Colorado Springs, he got a speeding ticket on the way to the park. You can guess what happened next.

“I got three hits that day,” he said. “So the next day, I took the same route. I went the same speed. And the same officer gave me a ticket. But I didn’t care. I got three hits that day, too. So I asked the officer to meet me the next day … and he indulged me.”

Leyland’s Hall of Fame case

Jim Leyland never thought he’d see a day when he would even manage in the big leagues. So you know he never thought he would live to see this day. Now he’s a Hall of Famer. Life is amazing like that sometimes.

But four decades ago, Tony La Russa changed the course of Leyland’s life, by bringing him to the major leagues as a coach with the White Sox. And one of baseball’s most colorful managerial characters took it from there.

He spent 22 seasons managing the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Tigers. He won a World Series (with the 1997 Marlins) and managed in two more. And he was two excruciating Game 7 losses away from reaching a fourth and fifth World Series, with the 1991-92 Pirates.

If you’re not Connie Mack, La Russa or Joe Torre, there’s no instant credential that makes anyone an automatic Hall of Fame manager. But who looked that part more than Leyland?

Until he got elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last December, no eligible manager in history had won a World Series, as many regular-season games as Leyland (1,769 career victories) and as many postseason games as Leyland (44) without getting a plaque in Cooperstown.

But now it’s his turn. And naturally, for a man who was once a .222 career hitter in the minor leagues, all of this is still shocking to him.

“I’m a very realistic person,” he said in a news conference last week. “And I realize, and I believe this, the Hall of Fame is for players, and I’m going in as a manager, and that’s different. So I look at it like I’m one of 23 managers that’s going to be in the Hall of Fame. … I always put the players first. And I kind of feel like I’m tagging along.”

Leyland’s path to election

When a man gets elected to the Hall by one of the veterans committees, it’s often because the 16-member committee was loaded with many of his friends and former players. But as Hall of Famer historian Chris Bodig observed last winter, Jim Leyland was so good at managing, he even got elected by a committee full of players and managers he once beat in October.

There were Chipper Jones and Tom Glavine of the Braves. They lost to Leyland’s Marlins, in a massive upset, in the 1997 NLCS.

There was Jim Thome. He played for the fearsome 1997 Cleveland Indians — another team that was ousted by Leyland’s Marlins, in a classic World Series Game 7.

And there was Joe Torre. His 2006 Yankees team was upset by another Leyland team, the Tigers, in the 2006 ALDS.

Most of them have never completely gotten over those losses. So they had every reason to cast their vote for someone else. Instead, Leyland was named on 15 of the 16 ballots cast that day. And that — like everything that has happened to him this weekend — is a reminder of something important:

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t like Jim Leyland.

Best moment from Leyland’s HOF speech

Leyland is an emotional guy. So of course, he gave an emotional speech, welling up at the mention of Pirates fans, winning the World Baseball Classic and his appreciation for everyone who loves baseball. But it was his account of a conversation with his wife that brought down the house.

Less than a minute into his speech, he thanked his family for its support, then turned specifically to his wife, Katie.

“Katie, this just doesn’t happen without you,” he said. ““You know, I was having coffee with Katie a couple weeks after I was elected to the Hall of Fame. And I casually said, ‘Katie, can you believe in your wildest dreams that I’ve been elected to the Hall of Fame?’ And Katie replied, ‘Jim, you’re not in my wildest dreams.’”

Who else was honored this weekend?

Beltré, Mauer, Helton and Leyland weren’t the only baseball greats to enter the Hall this weekend. Let’s not overlook the two other honorees.

• Longtime Red Sox radio voice Joe Castiglione was presented with the Ford Frick Award, which is essentially the broadcasters’ wing of the Hall.

• The late Gerry Fraley — who spent nearly 40 years covering baseball in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Texas — received the Baseball Writers’ Association of America Career Excellence Award, and will be honored in the writers’ wing.

More Hall of Fame coverage

(Top photo of Jim Leyland, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer holding their plaques: Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press)