Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer lead
iconic Hall class into induction
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[July 20, 2024]
The only 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee who did not get
in on his first try on the ballot is Todd Helton.
Yet Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer and Jim Leyland also took uniquely long
and challenging paths to Cooperstown.
Beltre, Helton, Mauer and Leyland will join one of the most
exclusive clubs in sports Sunday afternoon, when they are officially
inducted into the Hall of Fame during ceremonies at the Clark Sports
Center in the bucolic upstate New York town.
Beltre and Mauer were each elected in their first year of
eligibility in voting conducted last December by the Baseball
Writers' Association of America, while Helton made it on his sixth
year on the ballot.
Leyland, who managed eight playoff teams in a 22-year career and won
the World Series with the then-Florida Marlins in 1997, earned 15 of
16 votes cast by the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot in December.
Nobody has a better appreciation of the road to Cooperstown than
Leyland, who was elected days before his 79th birthday and 59 years
after he hit .204 in his first professional season with the Detroit
Tigers.
Leyland, a catcher, hit .222 for his career and didn't get above
Double-A before retiring in 1970 and immediately becoming a minor
league manager in the Tigers' organization.
He reached the major leagues as a manager in 1986 with the
Pittsburgh Pirates and won 1,769 games while filling out lineups for
the Pirates (1986-96), Florida Marlins (1997-98), Colorado Rockies
(1999) and Tigers (2006-13)
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His win total as a manager is 18th-most all-time and he became one
of 10 managers to win pennants in both leagues. The Leyland-led
Marlins won the 1997 World Series, while the Tigers fell in the
World Series in 2006 and 2012.
"I believe that the Hall of Fame is for players and I'm going in as
a manager and that's different," Leyland said. "I always put the
players first and I kind of feel like I'm kind of a tagalong."
Beltre ranks 18th all-time with 3,166 hits and received 95.1 percent
of the BBWAA vote -- tied for the 17th-largest share all-time with
original inductees Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner. Yet Beltre didn't hit
the Hall of Fame fast track until ending his career by hitting .304
with 199 homers and 699 RBIs for the Rangers from 2011-18, in a span
when he made three All-Star teams and finished top 15 in MVP voting
six times.
Beltre batted .275 with 278 homers and 1,008 RBIs for the Los
Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox from 1998
through 2010, a span in which he made one All-Star team and only
earned MVP votes in his walk years with the Dodgers in 2004 and Red
Sox in 2010.
Beltre joined the 3,000-hit club in 2017.
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![](../images/072024PIX/sports98.jpg)
Aug 5, 2023; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; 2023 member of the
Minnesota Twins hall of fame class Joe Mauer salutes the fans in a
pre-game ceremony before the match with the Arizona Diamondbacks at
Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports
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"At the time I was -- quote, unquote -- a
contract-year guy," Beltre said in January. "I appreciated the fact
that the Rangers gave me the chance to come to their ballpark and to
this city and be a part of the great team that they already had."
Mauer is a career-long member of the Minnesota Twins who will become
the first Hall of Famer born in the 1980s and the first to debut in
the 2000s. He built the bulk of his Hall of Fame case as a catcher
from 2004-13, when he hit .323 while winning three batting titles
and one MVP.
Multiple concussions forced Mauer to move to first base full-time in
2014. He hit .278 with an OPS of .746 -- 5 percent above the league
average -- over his final five seasons.
"I think through the process when you retire -- that five-year
period of kind of really reflecting on the whole body of work -- I
think was beneficial for me," Mauer said.
Helton, who played all 17 seasons with the Colorado Rockies, also
got off to a sizzling start by hitting .332 from 1997-2007, while
making five All-Star teams and leading the Rockies to the lone
pennant in franchise history in 2007.
Helton battled back woes over his final six seasons, when he batted
.279 with 66 home runs -- 17 more than he had in 2001 alone.
Like longtime teammate Larry Walker, who needed all 10 years on the
ballot before being elected in 2020, Helton's candidacy may have
suffered from a perception that his numbers were inflated by Coors
Field. But his .865 road OPS is better than the career OPS of all
but 82 Hall of Fame position players.
"For me to be good, I had to concentrate and focus 1,000 percent on
every pitch of every game," Helton said. "By the end of a season,
sure, I was physically tired. But mentally, I was beat just from
focusing on every pitch."
--Field Level Media
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