COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The schedule says it was a coincidence. The numbers say it was something stranger than that.
Andruw Jones was born April 23, 1977, in Willemstad, Curaçao. Carlos Beltrán was born the next day, April 24, 1977, in Manatí, Puerto Rico. Jones retired with 434 major-league home runs. Beltrán retired with 435. On Sunday, at the Clark Sports Center, they walked onto the stage together as members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026, joined by second baseman Jeff Kent.
Twelve thousand people showed up. A record 60 living Hall of Famers sat behind them on the dais — Sandy Koufax, Rod Carew, David Ortiz helping the 80-year-old Carew to his seat. Jones’s old Braves teammates were all there: Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz, Chipper Jones, Fred McGriff. They’d gathered at a round table on Friday to tell him what they’d been telling him for nine years on the ballot. Be patient. You’re going to get there.
He got there. It just took a while.
Jones needed nine years on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot, finally clearing the 75% threshold with 78.4% in January. Beltrán made it on his third try at 84.2% of 425 ballots. Kent, who peaked at 46.5% in a decade on the writers’ ballot and never came close, was elected last year by the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. None of the three were first-ballot selections. All three had to wait, and all three had different reasons for the delay.
Beltrán’s wait carried the most weight. He was the only player named in MLB’s January 2020 report on the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing operation — a scheme that used a center-field camera feed and trash-can bangs to relay pitch signs to hitters. The active players involved received immunity for cooperating. Beltrán, already retired, got no suspension but lost the Mets managing job he’d accepted two months earlier. He was the only one singled out by name.
“The fact that I’m the only player mentioned is kind of weird,” Beltrán said on a Zoom call with BBWAA members last Monday. “Sometimes it still gives me a bad taste in my mouth.”
He was blunt about his role. “I know I was part of that,” he said. “I know as a team we got together to do what we did. But this was not one player’s idea. It was a team being together from top to bottom.” He added: “We felt that other organizations had their systems. We felt that our system was better.”
The writers who held the scandal against him eventually softened. Beltrán noted that voters who skipped him in the first couple of years came around by the third. “The question will be: What changed for them?” he said. “What changed their mind to reward me?”
Jones’s case was always about the back half of his career. For 12 seasons in Atlanta, he was the best defensive center fielder of his generation — 10 Gold Gloves, five All-Star appearances, a .263 average with 368 home runs as a Brave. Then the decline: five seasons split across the Dodgers, Rangers, White Sox, and Yankees, a .210 average, 66 home runs, and a final stop in Japan. He finished at .254 with 434. The defensive greatness was never in doubt. The counting stats took longer to age into Cooperstown shape.
On Sunday, Jones became the first Hall of Famer from Curaçao. He paid tribute to Hensley Meulens, the first Curaçaoan in the majors, who debuted with the Yankees in 1989. “There’s no easy way to get here from the small island of Curaçao, more than 2,000 miles away,” Jones said. “But today Cooperstown and Curaçao are forever joined together.”
Beltrán’s plaque will bear the Mets logo. Jones’s will carry the Braves’ “A.” Kent, who hit more home runs as a second baseman than anyone in history — 351 at the position, 377 total — will represent the Yankees on his plaque, though he told the crowd his best years came in San Francisco. His speech centered on a 1985 Toyota pickup truck his father, a police officer, promised him if he earned a college scholarship. He quit racing motorcycles, won the scholarship to Cal Berkeley, and still has the truck in his garage.
Beltrán closed his speech in Spanish, addressing his parents, Wilfredo and Carmen. He quoted Bad Bunny’s “La Mudanza”: Un aplauso pa Mami y Papi porque en verdá rompieron. One round of applause for Mom and Dad because they truly crushed it.
“I love that song,” Beltrán said afterward. “It’s a tribute to our parents.”
His father won perfect-attendance certificates for 35 straight years at a pharmaceutical company. His mother raised him. One day apart, one home run apart, and now — same stage, same Sunday, same class.
Sources:
- Yahoo Sports — Carlos Beltrán quotes Bad Bunny during Hall of Fame induction
- Chicago Sun-Times — It took awhile, but Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltrán, Jeff Kent made Baseball Hall of Fame
- Forbes — Carlos Beltrán overcame a sign-stealing stigma to make Hall of Fame
- Marca — Hall of Fame Class of 2026 plaque team selections