Dominican third baseman Adrian Beltre, World Series champion manager Jim Leyland, catcher Joe Mauer and first baseman Todd Helton were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.
All attended emotional enshrinement ceremonies at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Beltre played 21 Major League Baseball seasons for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle, Boston and Texas, batting .286 overall with 477 home runs among 3,166 hits with 1,707 runs batted in.
“The best part was I loved it. I loved baseball,” Beltre said. “And I had so much fun playing the game.”
He was a first ballot inductee with 366 of 385 possible votes from a media panel and the only MLB third baseman to ever manage 3,000 career hits and 450 career homers.
Helton played 17 seasons with the Colorado Rockies and got 307 votes while Mauer, the only catcher to win three MLB batting titles, received 293 votes, each just making it over the 75% threshold needed to reach the Hall of Fame.
Helton, a five-time MLB All-Star, was the 2000 batting and RBI champion. He batted .316 with 369 homers among 2,519 hits and drove in 1,406 runs.
“The awards that have come to me from baseball are beyond the wildest dreams of a young rookie,” Helton said. “I know I’m a lucky man.”
Mauer, who played his entire 15-year career with Minnesota, was a six-time All-Star and a three-time American League batting champion with a .306 average, 143 homers, 2,123 hits and 923 RBI.
Leyland, 79, served as a manager for Pittsburgh, Florida, Colorado and Detroit. He guided the then-Florida Marlins to a 1997 World Series crown and was chosen for the Hall by a veterans selection committee.
Leyland won three Manager of the Year awards, six division titles and three league crowns over 22 seasons that included 1,769 wins.
He also came out of retirement to lead the United States to a 2017 World Baseball Classic crown.
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