Joe Mauer is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in front of thousands of Minnesota Twins fans

Joe Mauer didn’t realize the magnitude of the moment until Saturday during the Hall of Fame Legends Parade, as he sat with his family in the back of a truck looking out over a crowd of mostly Twins fans.

Then he walked to the podium on Sunday when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He ignored the request to keep his speech to about 10 minutes. But part of the reason was that he paused for applause 22 times.

The book on Mauer’s career closed Sunday when the doors to the Hall of Fame opened for him, and thousands of Twins fans from across the state and beyond were on hand to hear the final pages.

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It took about 40 seconds for the first round of applause to break out as he spoke about his roots and the special accomplishment of being one of four St. Paul residents living within a 3.6-mile radius to receive a plaque on the wall in Cooperstown.

He got a lump in his throat three minutes into the game when he talked about his grandfather, Jake Sr., standing next to the television watching his grandfather play and imitating his swing.

Mauer was generally calm. He was thorough. He could have added more humor, but he achieved his goal of conveying how he felt about the many people who were part of his journey.

“It wasn’t as easy as Joe made it seem,” fellow insider Adrian Beltre said when asked about his speech.

Was it as easy as Beltre thought?

“No. No chance,” Mauer said. “It was tough. There were a lot of emotions going into it. It was very emotional to get the call.

“A lot of people at home know that I recently lost my father and in the last few years my grandfather, both grandfathers. They’ve been able to see my whole career and I think they were there today to make sure that I could articulate the speech that I gave and I knew that they were here and it was definitely a lot harder than what Adrian says.”

Mauer and Beltre were inducted along with manager Jim Leyland and former Colorado Rockies star Todd Helton, whose father, Jerry, was a catcher in the Twins organization in 1968-69.