Thome true class of Hall of Fame Sunday

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - Jim Thome had said he wanted his Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech to inspire kids from his hometown of Peoria to chase their dreams.

In baseball lingo, he knocked it out of the park Sunday - just like one of the 612 home runs that paved the way to his election.

"Even though Peoria is 900 miles from Cooperstown, the history of baseball was never far from my childhood, because it lived in my imagination," Thome said.

"To every kid that is dreaming of standing here one day, take it one moment at a time. Don't sail too high or sink too low. Learn to be good at handling failure. Be the first one to the ballpark. Be the last one to leave. Work hard. Don't complain. Be a great teammate. Ask other people about themselves. And, above all, treat people with respect."

With an estimated crowd of 53,000 watching and cheering, Thome was last on the three-hour, 10-minute program, but it might as well have been the cleanup spot. His 19-minute message - the last half of it, in particular - was packed with lessons learned in 22 major-league seasons.

The crowd was the second largest on record for the induction ceremony, surpassed only by the 82,000 in 2007.

The six players inducted - Thome, Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Jones, Chipper Jones, Jack Morris and Alan Trammell - constituted the largest induction class since 1971. And at their backs on stage were 51 of the 76 living Hall of Famers, the most ever to gather in Cooperstown on the same day.

Thome had been concerned his speech might run a little long.

"I played on a lot of teams," he had said Saturday. He played for the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles. That's more than any of the other inductees in the Class of 2018.

But Jones, leading off, went a minute longer, perhaps because he was the only inductee to tell a story about one of the others.

"I've got to tell the story one more time," Jones told the crowd, reaching back to 1993 when both still were on the elevator between the major and minor leagues and they played against each other in a game in Richmond.

One of the pitchers had fired a fastball behind an opposing batter; always a message and frequently an ignition to a bench-clearing brawl.

"So I go diving into the pile," Jones said, "and the next thing I know, what can only be described as the hand of God grabs me around the throat and pins me to the backstop netting. All I hear is, 'Don't move.' So, thinking God had me around the neck, I naturally obliged.

"JT whispers in my ear. He said, 'You done?' I said, 'Yessir, I'm done.' We've been buddies ever since."

The tale provided a strong start to the proceedings, with Jones breaking the emotional ice as best he could.

Emotions presented a special obstacle for Thome. His 15-year-old daughter Lila performed the national anthem to open the program. Her voice seemed to crack slightly and briefly, perhaps from her own emotions, midway through. But she stayed strong and nailed the extra high note on "the land of the free."

Jim walked over and hugged her. "I got emotional right from the start," he would say later.

"It's not every day a dad gets a chance to share the stage with his kid on a day as special as this," he told the crowd.

It didn't figure to get any easier when Thome talked about his mother, Joyce, who died in 2005. There had been talk of placing an empty chair in the front row at the ceremonies to commemorate her memory. That didn't happen, but by the time Jim got around to talking about her, he was on a roll and smiling broadly.

"Mom, I know you're looking down on us with that beautiful smile of yours," Jim said. "Thank you for those homemade chicken noodles and those great cinnamon rolls and for sticking up for me when (older brothers) Randy and Chuck were crushing me in hoops on the driveway."

Then this: "Mom, I only hope you're proud of the man I became."

Thome is in the Hall of Fame for his baseball prowess. Most notably, there are the 612 homers, eighth in big-league history. He ranks seventh in walks, with 1,747. He drove in more than 100 runs nine times and is the all-time leader in walk-off home runs, with 13.

But his legacy in the game gets to the values instilled by his mother and father, Chuck Jr. Polls of Major League Baseball players during his career revealed him to be widely considered one of the best teammates and people in the game.

And that cut to another message he delivered at the end of his speech: "If you try to conduct yourself with authenticity and honesty, the end result is one of the most natural highs any human being can have."

A true a Hall of Fame ending.

• Kirk Wessler is Journal Star sports editor. Contact him at kwessler@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @KirkWessler.