ARLINGTON, Texas – Adrián Beltré still hasn’t had an opportunity to just stop and really let it soak in that he is enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame.
“I understand, and I know what that weekend was,” Beltré said. “But I’d be lying to you if I said that I have ... It just hasn’t.”
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Maybe after being recognized again by the Texas Rangers, the last team in his 21 big league seasons and the one the third baseman played with the longest.
Four weeks after his induction in Cooperstown, the Rangers honored Beltré with a series of events, including a ceremony before their game against Minnesota on Saturday night, when his actual Hall of Fame plaque was on display in the ballpark.
“This was my last thing on the calendar, this weekend,” Beltré said. “After that, go home and be a dad and a husband again, and try to figure out when we can find a space for a little vacation. Because I need to just lay down on the beach a little bit.”
The Rangers, who retired his No. 29 jersey in 2019, surprised Beltré during the pregame ceremony when announcing plans for a bronze statue. That will be unveiled next season outside Globe Life Field, where there are already statues of Hall of Fame players Nolan Ryan and Iván “Pudge” Rodríguez.
On his way from California to Cooperstown last month, Beltré stopped in Texas for several days while serving as an ambassador for MLB’s All-Star Game hosted by his former team.
Beltré managed the American League team in the Futures Game, appeared with Commissioner Rob Manfred at MLB’s amateur draft and then at the All-Star Game, five days before his own induction, he was part of the first-pitch ceremony with a trio of other former Rangers who were already in the Hall of Fame: pitchers Fergie Jenkins and Ryan, and catcher Rodríguez.
While the Hall of Fame festivities were surreal and a bit of a blur for Beltré, he said special moments from that weekend included having his family there and conversations with a couple of Hall of Famers that he had always looked up to: Dominican pitcher and fellow countryman Juan Marichal and third baseman Mike Schmidt.
Beltré described the 86-year-old Marichal as “being the pinnacle of baseball in my country, the first Hall of Famer that we had.”
He had a picture taken with other Hall of Fame third basemen Schmidt, George Brett, Chipper Jones and Scott Rolen.
After leaving Cooperstown and spending a couple of nights in New York City, Beltré went home and got so busy with his three kids, two of them in college along with a teenage daughter, that they ended up not going on a planned vacation to Hawaii.
This weekend in Texas began with him as the featured guest at the team's annual Hall of Fame luncheon on Friday. The Rangers then unveiled two public display cases filled with memorabilia from his eight seasons with team, including his 3,000th career hit, his 400th homer and even a dirt-stained jersey he wore 12 years ago during the second of his three career cycles.
"Special player, special talent," said Josh Jung, the current Rangers third baseman.
“You knew it was a special career going on in front of you as you were watching it," said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, a big league player from 2003-10. “It wasn’t one of those, I wonder if this guy’s a special player or a unique guy in the clubhouse or a leader, anything like that. You just knew.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb