COOPERSTOWN, New York – Few Baseball Hall of Famers have waited longer than Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent to feel like rookies one more time.

“This is the closest thing to my first at-bat in the big leagues,” Beltran said as he opened his speech Sunday afternoon. “Where I feel excited to be here, but at the same time, I feel very nervous.”

It’s finally time to relax for Beltran, Jones and Kent, whose collective patience was rewarded when they were officially enshrined in front of an estimated crowd of 12,000 on a sun-splashed day at the Clark Sports Center in this bucolic upstate town.