The Hall of Fame is made for players like Adrián Beltré. As a pure hitter, reliable slugger and slick third baseman, Beltré had few peers: No other infielder in the history of baseball has 3,000 hits, 400 homers and five Gold Glove awards. Beltré, now 44, was a lock for the Hall of Fame.
As a first-time Cooperstown candidate, Beltré did not need to follow the breathless tracking of public ballots this winter. Yet he still could not feel secure, he said, until his wife and son assured him on Tuesday that election day looked promising. He could savor it.
“That made me relax a little bit more, and I kind of forced myself to try to enjoy this moment,” Beltré said from his home in Southern California, moments after achieving his sport’s greatest honor. “It was going to be a nice moment, and probably the last moment in baseball that I was going to accomplish, being at the pinnacle of the game.”
Beltré had company at the summit on Tuesday, with Todd Helton and Joe Mauer joining him in the new class of Hall of Famers. Former manager Jim Leyland, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last month, will also be inducted at the ceremony July 21.
Candidates must receive 75 percent of the ballots from 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of…
