Hall of Famers head for Cooperstown for Induction Weekend

The legends began arriving en masse on Thursday in Cooperstown for what will be a record-setting Hall of Fame Weekend.

As the final touches are completed for the Class of 2026, the sport’s most esteemed roster will increase with the enshrinement of second baseman Jeff Kent and a pair of center fielders, Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltrán.

The Class of 2026 will be inducted at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 26, on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center. Baseball Writers’ Association of America electees Beltrán and Jones will join Contemporary Baseball Era Committee electee Kent.

Sixty of the 77 living Hall of Famers, which includes the three members of the Class of 2026 and will be the most Hall of Famers ever at any one place, are planning on attending Hall of Fame Weekend. The total number of electees now numbers 354.

.@PaulByrd36 and @andruwjones25 have the exclusive in Cooperstown⚾️ pic.twitter.com/IwJEZj3cYd

— BravesVision (@BravesVisionTV) July 23, 2026

“Oh man, it’s awesome! It’s a great feeling,” is how Andruw Jones described his emotions upon arriving in Cooperstown. “It’s a great honor finally making it into the Hall of Fame, being with so many people that you idolized growing up, teammates, ex-teammates. It’s just a great honor.

“Summer in Cooperstown is what the Hall of Fame is all about.”

Jones will be joined by a number of former Atlanta Braves teammates – Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones and Fred McGriff – who will be making the trek to Cooperstown to celebrate the occasion. They all contributed to a record 14 consecutive division titles from 1991 to 2005 (excluding the 1994 strike-canceled season).

“It’s a big group and I’m happy to be a part of them, maybe the last piece of the of those great Braves teams in the Hall of Fame,” Jones said. “That team that we had in the late ’90s and early 2000s that won all the division titles together, the whole group together is in the Hall of Fame now.”

Unfortunately, the Braves’ manager during this unprecedented success, Bobby Cox, passed away on May 9, 2026, at the age of 84. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2014.

“Not having Bobby here is tough,” Jones said. “The man that gave us all the trust, the opportunity to go out there and be the person that we are now, and now we’re in the Hall of Fame. We’re going to miss him deeply, but I know he’s in a good place now. He’s just going to look from above and have a good smile for us and be happy that we are all together at the same time.”

Before attending to another commitment on his busy schedule, Jones was asked about his induction speech and the nerves leading up to such a public moment.

“I try not to think about it because then I’ll start getting nervous. Because if I think about it, I’ll start worrying about it. So, I try to just kind of block it away,” he said. “But when I sleep, I think about how I’m going to say the speech. But to be honest with you, I just try not to because the moment is so big and you’re just trying to take everything in.”

Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs, Class of 2005, was also in town with the early arrivals.

“I think any time you can have less than one percent of (all) Major League Baseball players get together in one room on a Sunday night for a dinner is pretty special,” said Boggs, referencing the 281 elected former big leaguers out of almost 24,000 to ever play the game. “We have a tremendous, tremendous fraternity, and I’m so happy that that this year I think we have 60 Hall of Famers coming back. It’s just going to be so enjoyable, so pleasurable. In my opinion, this is heaven on earth.

“Everybody leaves their ego at the door. There are so many great players, and it’s the who’s who of whoever played the game. And granted, we have our Punch and Judy table,” he said with a smile, “but other than that, I mean, it’s just so special. You look around and there’s 300-game winners, there’s multiple MVPs, there’s Cy Youngs. It’s like old home week. And everybody, they get along so well together.”

Though Boggs was inducted more than 20 years ago, he admitted it seems like yesterday.

“I’m just so thankful and blessed with my cancer diagnosis and everything’s good to go with that. Ryno (Ryne Sandberg) and I were diagnosed at the same time, and his outcome was a little bit different than mine (Sandberg passed away in 2025 at the age of 65), but he’ll be here in spirit, and we miss him. We were both from the Hall of Fame Class of 2005, and he’s my wingman.”

Boggs was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2024.

“I just got my checkup again, and totally cancer free, and nothing’s really changed,” he said. “We just keep going full steam ahead.”

When Boggs thinks back to his own Induction Weekend, he thinks of his father, who passed away in 2009.

“Just having my father there,” he said. “My mom was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in ’86. But having my dad there, what it meant to him to have his son, and how he taught me how to play the game and how to hit, that was that was very special for me.”

Bill Francis is the senior research and writing specialist at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum