You're about to be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, and it seems so totally natural. Being selected for membership in Cooperstown is enough of a rush by itself, but to go in the way you did - essentially by acclamation - leaves little to say.

Except, of course, ``Congratulations.''

The critics who wanted you to hit more home runs and fewer singles had their day in court and lost. Those who said you couldn't field the position at third base have long since been silenced. All that's left is to retell the story we've told so often, it seems sometimes we know it here by memory.

You're the kid who came from the dusty playgrounds of Davis Islands and the field at Plant High, armed mostly with determination and a dream for what your life would be.

That dream was baseball. It was always about baseball.

We know how long it took for you to make it to the majors because none of the experts who run the game could look past what they believed you couldn't do long enough to see the giant heart that beat inside you. It seems so silly now that you spent six years playing in the minors before Boston finally gave you a chance.

We know what happened next, too. The Red Sox turned to you when third baseman Carney Lansford got hurt, and you grabbed hold of the job and never let go. You went on to hit safely 3,010 times, and when you became eligible for Cooperstown, you were voted in on the first ballot. With ease.

Sorting The Mail

I'd love to say I knew this day would come the first time I saw you nearly 30 years ago, but that would be a lie. You were a senior at Plant then, and everyone said you were the best hitter in town.

I remember thinking that you just looked like a baseball player, if that makes any sense. You had a certain energy and intensity even then, and I walked away thinking I might have just met a future major- leaguer. But no one could have foreseen what you would become on a baseball field.

How could we have known how perfect your batting eye would be? As the ball left the pitcher's hand, you knew instantly whether this was something to be taken, fouled off or sent into left field with your classic inside-out swing.

No one could have guessed your patience, which is legendary by now. Your ability to frustrate pitchers by fouling off their best two-strike stuff is without peer.

``He'd get to two strikes,'' Baltimore pitching coach Ray Miller told ESPN's Peter Gammons, ``and he'd start fouling off pitch after pitch. He looked like a guy sorting through the mail looking for a check.''

You had to wait on draft day, until Boston took you in the seventh round. You had to wait six more years in Boston's minor-league system. You won a Triple-A batting title and the Red Sox left you unprotected, meaning any club could have claimed you and put you on their team.

No one did.

All the doubters only made you stronger.

``I think it has a tendency to make you a little more hungry to get there and once you do, you want to stay there,'' you said. ``But now, these kids go to spring training and hang out like they're the big-leaguers and sit on the bench and joke around and you're in the middle of the battle.

``These kids that get called in September have no business being there whatsoever. They're hitting .215, but because they have a major- league contract to be in the big leagues in September they get to come up. They have good agents, that's basically what it turns out to be. You know, they sit on the bench, and you get your butt kicked by eight or nine runs and they're joking and laughing, eating candy bars and drinking Cokes and saying `Man, this is the big leagues.' Dude, you have a lot to learn, you have a lot to learn. I just don't understand.''

Staying Power

We don't see enough players with that attitude anymore. We don't see guys willing to work hours a day perfecting their game, guys who take criticisms of their games personally. When they said you couldn't field, you took 150 ground balls a day to get better.

When you won the first of your two Gold Gloves, you said it was the proudest moment of your big-league career.

``The hard part's not making it to the big leagues,'' you said. ``The hard part is staying there.''

Well, when you finally got there, you stayed for 18 seasons.

You made us smile when you won five batting titles.

We cried with you when your mother died.

We celebrated with you when you rode the horse at Yankee Stadium, when your team won the World Series. And even though you were near the end of your career when you came home to play for the Devil Rays, you saved a special treat. No one there the night you turned your 3,000th big-league hit into a home run trot, with a nod toward the sky to your mother, will ever forget it.

We're not sure where the time went, or why it had to go by so quickly, but no one has any regrets on this day. It's baseball's biggest day and you're the guest of honor, but this is a day for everyone to share.

So here you go, Wade. There's nothing left to do but savor the moment as you take your rightful place among the greats who ever played. You're one of them now. But the really cool thing is, you'll always be one of us.