Here’s a glimpse of, and some chats with, the baseball royalty at another glimmering Hall of Fame induction weekend

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Great baseball players love to talk baseball.

This became obvious to me over the final years of Ted Williams’s life. Ted was kind to my family in his last decade and still an awesome, loud presence even after a stroke partially blinded him. When he visited Boston for the last time during the 1999 All-Star festivities, he gently nodded off during my midday visit at his Four Seasons suite.

Happily, there was a subtle, fool-proof way to bring Ted Williams back to the moment: Start talking about hitting.

It would make him loud and animated again. Ted would sit up in his chair, extend his arms, and ask for paper and pencil so he could teach his science of hitting.

In this spirit, let me take you behind the curtain at Cooperstown, where the family of baseball gathered for Sunday’s annual Induction Ceremony for new members Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones, and Carlos Beltrán.

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None of the three ever played for the Red Sox, but their enshrinement enticed 57 Hall of Fame veterans to gather at the grand Otesaga Hotel. That is where our weekend tour begins.

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It’s Friday afternoon in the Otesaga’s downstairs Hawkeye Bar & Grill, where barkeep Chris has placed reserved signs for Wade and Debbie Boggs, celebrating 49 years since Wade proposed marriage when they were Tampa teenagers. Wade and Debbie are the mayor and first lady of the Hawkeye. They take their seats and say hello to an old Sox beat guy from the Globe.

Wade says he had a great conversation with Carl Yastrzemski at Fenway earlier this year. They were teammates for two seasons in the early 1980s when Boggs was 20-something and Yaz was a baseball old man over 40.

“I was in awe of him and a little afraid of him,” says Boggs. “He hardly said anything, but would get mad if he didn’t like what I was wearing. He’d say, ‘That’s not the way we dress in the big leagues.’ I’m so grateful for the conversation we had this year. We talked for about 15 minutes and that never happened before.”

Former Orioles slugger Eddie Murray stops to chat. Murray is the only living Hall of Famer with 500 homers and 3,000 hits. Boggs won five batting titles and had a regular-season average of .369 at Fenway.

I ask them to explain what’s happened to hitting. There were no lefty .300 hitters last year. Even with the universal DH, the leaguewide batting average this summer is .244. Strikeouts are off the charts. At the All-Star Game, 20 pitchers whiffed 27 very good batters over nine innings. There was only one extra-base hit. The NL managed three measly singles.

“I’d probably walk 230 times if I played now,” says Boggs. “These guys today don’t take the high strike. And the way they’re setting up, they can’t get to it.”

“It’s the way they load up,” added Murray. “You lift that front foot, you can’t get to that high one. And you can’t get out of the way if it comes at you. I warned [former Orioles catcher] James McCann about that, but he didn’t listen. He got one in the face [in 2024].”

Tigers legend Alan Trammell, 68, is one of the few Hall of Famers still encouraged to work with his organization’s young players and is diplomatic when asked about analytics armies pushing launch angle and spin rate.

“I work with the younger guys on defense a lot,” says Trammell. “When it comes to hitting, there’s room for all opinions and I don’t push too hard on things. I don’t want to embarrass anybody.”

Related: The Red Sox have surged into contention despite some very real issues on offense. These stats tell the story.

Hours later, Ken Griffey Jr. holds court on the same topic in the middle of the Hawkeye. Griffey gets in my face, puts his hands on my shoulders, and presses down.

“There,” he says. “You’re ready to hit. Your shoulders are level. If you tilt that front shoulder up, you’re not gonna be ready. You’re gonna strike out.

“It’s not the pitching, it’s the approach. We’d hit even more homers now. Seriously,” says Griffey, who had 630. “Seventy-three in a season would happen again. Nobody cares about striking out, so you just go for it. Sure, there are more pitchers who throw harder, but it’s the hitters. They’re tilting up and they commit. They’re not level. Their front shoulder is too high and they can’t catch up.”

Demonstration over, Griffey wanders off and joins former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, who is in Cooperstown as a guest of Jones. Griffey and Tomlin discuss Trey Griffey, a star wide receiver from Arizona who was on the Steelers’ practice squad in 2018-19.

Tomlin is not the only NFL notable in the building. Troy Aikman is here as a guest of Ford C. Frick Award winner Joe Buck, the man who in 2004 famously told America, “Red Sox fans have longed to hear it. The Boston Red Sox are world champions.”

Yaz and Carlton Fisk didn’t make it this weekend, but Red Sox legends David Ortiz, Jim Rice, Dennis Eckersley, and Pedro Martinez did.

“What about our team?,” Pedro says. “Fifteen in a row! This is so great and I am so happy for them. I love the pitching!”

I ask Pedro and Eck how they would fare in today’s MLB. Both answer, “More punchouts.”

Eck was at Fenway for meet-and-greets in the Legends’ Suite last week and says John Henry — the Red Sox primary owner who also owns the Globe — went out of his way to visit and tell him how much he’s meant to the Red Sox.

I eat dinner on the Hawkeye’s lakeside patio with a few writers and friends, including ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian. A couple of tables over, Mike Schmidt and George Brett dine together. Two of the greatest third baseman of all time, superstar leaders of the 1980 World Series in which Schmidt’s Phillies beat the Royals in six.

After our dinner, Kurkjian excuses himself to use the restroom and returns with a remarkable story.

“So I go into the bathroom which is pretty big and the three guys at the three urinals are Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz. I mean, what are the odds?”

…

More players and executives arrive for Saturday’s Parade of Legends, when each player rides in the rear bed of a pickup and waves to fans, some of whom have been camped out on Main Street since early morning. After the parade, Hall of Famers and their families and guests gather for a private reception in the plaque gallery.

It’s a seamhead’s smorgasboard.

Ichiro is here. So is Rod Carew, Ferguson Jenkins, Tony Perez, Cal Ripken Jr., Paul Molitor, and Jim Kaat. Rollie Fingers is here for the 34th consecutive induction weekend.

Juan Marichal, 88, stands in the gallery and talks of the summer of 1959 when he developed his high leg kick and overhand delivery while pitching for the Giants’ minor-league team at Pynchon Park in Springfield.

“I could throw overhand or three-quarter or drop down and throw sidearm,” says the Dominican master. “But with the leg kick and overhand, they had trouble picking up the ball because they would see my glove and my leg first.”

Nearby, a beardless Rice sits and visits with Murray, Ozzie Smith, and family members of all three.

Murray and Smith were teammates at Los Angeles’s Locke High School in the early 1970s. Two guys from the same high school team made it to Cooperstown?

I say hello to Ozzie and ask if he and Eddie ever lost a game.

“Yeah, a few,” Smith says with a laugh. “We didn’t even win the championship. We got beat by Robin Yount’s team [Taft High in Woodland Hills].”

Yikes. That’s three Hall of Famers in the same high school game. This was not my experience when Groton High played Tahanto Regional in the spring of 1971.

Sticking with the high school roots theme, I say hello to Joe Mauer and ask him if it’s true that he only struck out once in high school.

“Yup,” he says. “It was my junior year in the tournament. I foul tipped a 2-2 pitch and went back to the dugout and my coach told me that was the first. It ended up being the only time.”

These guys are not like us.

Mauer is one of four St. Paul natives in the Hall of Fame. The others are Dave Winfield, Molitor, and Jack Morris. Winfield has his own statue at Toni Stone Field in St. Paul and the other three are scheduled to join him in bronze.

…

Saturday night, back in the Hawkeye, Chipper Jones stops to talk. He hit more regular-season homers (468) than any switch hitter other than Mickey Mantle (536) and Murray (504). Beltrán is fourth with 435. I ask Jones how he came to switch hit.

“My dad was a huge Mickey Mantle fan and had me doing it when I was seven. I’m a natural righty, and I didn’t really do it full-time until I was 19,” he says. “When I was in high school I stayed right, but my dad said I had to switch hit in the summer league, which was 60 games.”

I ask how his career numbers compared. Jones smiles broadly.

“.303 left and .304 right. Dad knew what he was doing.”

After 10 p.m., Sandy Koufax walks in from the patio with Joe Torre. As they exit the Hawkeye, they bump into Reggie Jackson and a long chat ensues by the maitre-d station.

Koufax has not pitched on a big league mound in 60 years. He won 27 in 1966, then retired. His final game was a 6-0, Game 2 World Series loss to the Orioles and a 20-year-old kid pitcher named Jim Palmer. He’s been coming to the Otesaga for this weekend for 54 years.

Reggie is 80. Torre is 86. Koufax is 90. They all look darned good.

…

Sunday’s afternoon induction at the Clark Sports Center is seamless, under perfect skies. MLB Network’s Brian Kenny handles introductions for each of the 57 Hall of Famers. Big Papi is first to be seated on the large stage, and when 80-year-old Carew and 88-year-old Tony Oliva struggle to get to their seats, Ortiz rises to assist.

After Kent, Jones, and Beltrán deliver pitch-perfect speeches, everybody goes back to the Otesaga for photos, rocking chairs on the porch, maybe a cigar, and dueling dinners at opposite ends of the hotel: One for the 60 Hall of Famers, another for their spouses.

“I had dinner with Sandy here last year on Sunday night,” 87-year-old Kaat says proudly.

Koufax and Kaat faced one another 61 years ago in the seventh game of the World Series, with Koufax spinning a three-hit shutout in a 2-0 Dodger win over the Twins.

Koufax and Kaat. Hardball royalty. Talking baseball long into the night.