Todd Helton of Knoxville, Tenn., was one of four Major League Baseball players inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.
Helton grew in Knoxville, played baseball at Central High School and was immediately drafted by the San Diego Padres in the second round of the 1992 draft. After being drafted, he elected to head to Rocky Top to play baseball for the Volunteers at the University of Tennessee in his hometown. In 1995, he was heading from Rocky Top to the Rocky Mountains after being drafted in the first round by the Colorado Rockies.
He played all 17 years of his MLB career with the Rockies, where he played 2,247 games. He hit for 0.316 batting average with 369 home runs. Over the course of his career, he scored 1,401 runs on 2,519 hits. He also had 1,406 RBIs.
He played in five All-Star games, won three Golden Gloves and four Silver Slugger awards.
He helped the team to their only World Series appearance in franchise history in 2007, but they were swept by the Boston Red Sox.
In his acceptance speech Sunday with fellow hall of famers behind him, Helton said, “The awards that have come to me from baseball are beyond the wildest dreams of a young rookie coming out of the University of Tennessee. I know I’m a lucky man.”
Joining Helton to be immortalized in baseball history in Cooperstown, N.Y., as part of the Class of 2024 were Adrian Beltre, Jim Leyland and Joe Mauer.