Rock on! Helton at last gets the call, headed to Hall

KNOXVILLE, TENN. >> Todd Helton, arms folded across his chest, nervously paced the living room of his home Tuesday afternoon.

“I haven’t been superstitious for 10 years, not since I retired,” the Rockies’ iconic first baseman said. “Today, I’m superstitious. I didn’t look at anything, I didn’t watch anything, I didn’t look at the internet.”

He could have spared himself the angst.

Because, fittingly, at 5:17 p.m. Eastern time, No. 17 got the call of a lifetime. Told that he had been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Helton pumped his fist and finally took a deep breath.

“It’s the greatest honor you can get as a baseball player,” Helton said. “Getting your number retired and getting elected to the Hall of Fame are the two greatest achievements you can get.”

Still, Helton wasn’t quite ready to let it all go.

“I’m going to go (crazy) when y’all leave,” he said.

The sweet-swinging Helton, the beloved heart and soul of the Rockies for 17 seasons and one of the most accomplished players of his era, received 79.7% of the vote, clearing the 75% bar required by the Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Joining Helton in the Class of 2024 are third baseman Adrian Beltre (95.1%) and catcher Joe Mauer (76.1%).

Helton, who played his entire career in Colorado, joins Larry Walker (Class of 2020) as the only two Rockies to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

“I’ll tell you what, 162 games is a long season, but the fans in Colorado always energized me,” he said.

Helton, 50, retired after the 2013 season with 2,519 hits, 369

home runs, 592 doubles and a career batting average of .316. He was a fivetime All-star and threetime Gold Glove winner. Helton is one of only two players in baseball history to have at least 2,500 hits, 550 doubles, 350 home runs and a career batting average of .315 or higher. Cardinals legend Stan Musial is the other.

But the numbers on the back of Helton’s baseball card only begin to explain why he’ll be inducted into Cooperstown on July 21.

His work ethic, passion for baseball and white-hot desire to win made him special.

He brought a mixture of Tennessee charm, biting wit and steely intelligence to the Rockies clubhouse, and he was a warrior on the diamond.

“Very early on I realized that Todd was a baseball player with a football player’s mentality,” remembered former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, who first got to know Helton in 1995 when Hurdle was Colorado’s minor league hitting coordinator. “Todd wouldn’t play angry, but he wouldn’t be like Miguel Cabrera — smiling and laughing. Todd’s joy was defined differently. His joy was defined by beating your ass.”

Helton, a native of Knoxville, attended Central High School and earned a football scholarship to the University of Tennessee as a quarterback, where he was famously replaced by NFL Hall of Fame and former Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning.

“I used to watch Todd take batting practice at Tennessee,” Manning recalled. “It just had a different sound to it when he was taking batting practice. I certainly knew that he was a special talent. I have enjoyed following him all of these years, even before I got to Denver.

“We always kept in touch and I’ve always appreciated his friendship. He took so much pride in his craft and

he was very much a student of the game, even though he had so much natural talent.

“So it was a no-brainer for me. He’s a Hall of Fame baseball player and a Hall of Fame friend as well.”

Helton’s wife, Christy, admitted she was a nervous wreck all day and was overcome when Helton was elected.

“It was terribly hard waiting, but deep down, I thought he was going to get in,” she said.

“He put everything he had into (his career). Todd never played for himself, but I know that this mattered a lot to him.”

Helton’s mom, Martha, who attended Tuesday’s watch party, said she thought her son was deserving of the Hall of Fame, but added, “I didn’t see any of this happening until it happened — I was just happy he was out there playing ball, and he liked it.”

Baseball was Helton’s true calling from a young age. His late father, Jerry, a catcher in the Minnesota Twins organization in 1968 and ’69, taught Helton how to hit in the garage of their Knoxville home.

“He made a batting tee from a washing machine hose and I hit off of that,” Helton once recalled. “I was just 5 years old.”

The lessons learned in that garage were at the root of Helton’s prowess at the plate. He became a linedrive hitter with power and the ability to hit the ball to all fields. After all, if Helton pulled the ball in his dad’s garage, he’d dent his dad’s fiberglass fishing boat parked in the corner.

Helton took a moment Tuesday to reflect on his father, who died in 2015.

“My dad would have lost his mind today,” said Helton. “My dad was very hard on me, but when I would do bad — which was 1-for-3 when I was little — he’d say, “One-for-three gets you in the Hall of Fame.’

“I can remember him saying that when I was 8 or 9 years old. He was hard on me, but he picked me up when I was down, too. And he also told me he prayed

that when I was in high school, that I’d be a baseball player. And he’s like, ‘If you’re going to dream, dream to be a big-league baseball player, just a baseball player. Dream to be a Hall of Famer.”

Rockies left-hander Jeff Francis, who teamed with Helton on the Rockies’ 2007 World Series squad, said: “Todd’s the best hitter I ever saw and the best I ever played with.”

Hall of Fame righthander John Smoltz can attest to Helton’s skills as a hitter. In 28 career plate appearances vs. Smoltz, Helton hit .417 (10-for-24) with four doubles, four strikeouts and four walks.

“He was one of those elite hitters and his style gave me a lot of problems,” Smoltz said. “The only time I started having success was when I started throwing a splitter later in my career. I always felt that he was an athletic hitter who seemed like he had total control over the strike zone. I didn’t like guys like that, to be honest.”

Right fielder Brad Hawpe, who’s long been one of Helton’s best friends, recalled Helton as one of the most skilled and disciplined hitters of his era. Helton finished his career with a .414 on-base percentage and a minuscule 12.4% strikeout rate.

“If anybody ever asks me what it takes to be a good hitter, I tell them to look at Todd and his level of balance,” said Hawpe, who played with Helton from 2004 to 2010. “A pitcher’s job is to disrupt a hitter’s timing and balance, but you couldn’t do that to Todd. His balance was just off the charts.”

Helton’s 2000 season, which included 42 homers, 59 doubles, 147 RBIS and 405 total bases, is the stuff of legend. He flirted with a .400 average into September, and although he slumped a bit in the final month, his .372/.463/.698 line gave him the slashstat triple crown, something Walker did the previous season (.379/.458/.710).

Still, because of the stigma of playing his home games at a pre-humidor Coors

Field, Helton finished fifth in the National League MVP vote behind Jeff Kent, Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza and Jim Edmonds.

Five-time All-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who played with Helton from 2006 to 2013, remembered Helton as one of the most complete players he ever saw.

“He came to play every single day, no matter how he felt, and people sometimes forget that he was an elite defender,” Tulowitzki said. “Because of his glove, I became a better shortstop.

“And as a young kid coming up, seeing the professional ABS he threw out there, and just making the pitcher work, that’s what he ingrained in me.”

Tulowitzki played with Helton after the first baseman had peaked. In 2002, after Major League Baseball began storing baseballs used at Coors Field in a humidor, Helton’s home run total fell to 30. That was after he slugged 42 and 49 in the previous two seasons. Helton never hit more than 33 homers from his age-28 season until the end of his career.

But even as his power waned, he remained the Rockies’ unquestioned leader.

“A lot of us learned a lot from Todd about what it took to be great,” said outfielder Matt Holliday, a sixtime All-star, three with the Rockies and three with the Cardinals. “He set a great example for us as far as the work in the cage, the concentration level, the competitive spirit.”

Holliday said he tried to pattern his approach after Helton’s.

“Todd had an incredible eye at the plate and I wanted to carry that with me in my career,” Holliday said.

“I wanted to be a difficult out; somebody who could hold his concentration no matter what the situation was, no matter what the score was. He was tremendous in head-to-head confrontations with the pitcher. In that regard, he was, if not the best, then one of the best, I ever saw.”