Jim Kaat, whose great baseball career and great baseball life has now been honored by the Golden Days Era Committee, was talking about that baseball life on Tuesday morning, and looking back, because I¡¯ve asked him to.

¡°I like to think I¡¯m a lot like our game,¡± Kaat said. ¡°I don¡¯t live in the past. I just honor it.¡±

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So I asked him to honor his own past and talk about facing Ted Williams when he was a kid.

Kaat, who is 83 now, laughed.

¡°I had him 0-2 the first time I faced him at Fenway,¡± Kaat said. ¡°Then I dropped down and threw him a curveball on the outside corner, one he promptly hit off the '379' sign. Johnny Schaive was playing second base for us that day. When Williams got to second he said to Johnny, ¡®Did you see how far that went? Because I didn¡¯t get all of it.¡¯¡±

This was 1959, late in the season.

¡°The next time up I got him 0-2 again,¡± Jim Kaat said. ¡°This time when I dropped down I threw him a fastball on the corner, because I still had a little bit of velocity in those days. Ted hit a one-hopper so vicious the ball nearly took Johnny¡¯s glove off.¡±

Kaat paused then.

¡°I faced Ted one last time, in ¡¯60,¡± he said. ¡°Popped him up.¡±

? Top 10 moments of Jim Kaat's career

Jim Kaat, out of Zeeland, Mich., and Hope College, who won 283 games in the big leagues and was still around to pitch in four World Series games at the age of 44 for the World Series champion Cardinals in 1982, officially makes it to Cooperstown at last, the way an old teammate of his, Tony Oliva, does right along with him.

I asked on Tuesday what his first connection to Cooperstown was. It prompted another story, of course.

¡°I was doing a Zoom appearance with Tony yesterday,¡± Kaat said, ¡°and I held up a picture of my dad from 1947. He¡¯s got a corncob pipe and a tie that¡¯s about five inches too short, but he¡¯s standing in front of the museum because he¡¯d traveled from Michigan to attend Lefty Grove¡¯s induction. Lefty was his hero, and became the first baseball hero I ever heard of. My dad made the trip because he wanted to see Lefty become part of the club.¡±

The first time Jim Kaat went to Cooperstown himself was in 1956, when he¡¯d traveled to upstate New York to spend Thanksgiving with his college roommate, Al Kober (who called Jim Kaat on Monday and told him he¡¯d already booked three rooms in Utica, N.Y., for Jim¡¯s induction on July 24).

¡°Hey,¡± Kaat told Al Kober over the phone 65 years ago, ¡°I¡¯m in Cooperstown.¡±

Hey, Jim Kaat is in Cooperstown for real now.

¡°I¡¯m proof that you¡¯re never too old to be a dreamer,¡± he said.

Kaat first pitched in the big leagues in 1959, when the Twins were still the Washington Senators. He was still broadcasting a playoff game for the MLB Network this past October, and has been such a fine baseball broadcaster for such a long time, he might someday be worthy of the Ford C. Frick Award for baseball broadcasters.

¡°If you count the broadcasting,¡± Bob Costas, himself a Frick Award winner, ¡°Jim¡¯s an eight-decade guy.¡±

When I told Jim Kaat that Bob had said that, he laughed again and said, ¡°Did he start doing that degrees of separation thing he loves to do with me, where he takes me back to Babe Ruth or something?¡±

I told him that Costas absolutely did that.

¡°Jim broke in the year Nellie Fox was MVP,¡± Costas said. ¡°Fox played for Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics when he broke in. Mack was born during the Civil War and managed the A¡¯s from 1901-50. With just two moves, from Fox to Mack, Jim Kaat is connected to the entire modern history of baseball.¡±

Kaat also faced Julio Franco in 1982, when Franco was a rookie, beginning a long career of his own that lasted until 2007, nearly a half-century after Jim Kaat had first arrived in the big leagues for the Senators.

Across the eight decades about which Bob Costas spoke of, Kaat has been one of the enduring gentleman baseball has ever produced, and not just because of immortals with whom he intersected along the way.

He pitched three games against Sandy Koufax in the 1965 World Series. The Twins and the Dodgers had split the first two games and then the Dodgers beat Kaat, 2-0, in Game 7. At his best, he wasn¡¯t just good enough to go up against Koufax in the Series. Jim Kaat, in his prime, was just that good, period.

On Tuesday, he talked about another visit to Cooperstown, 10 years after his first, the summer after the Twins had lost to the Dodgers in the Series.

¡°They were still playing a Hall of Fame [exhibition] game in those days,¡± Kaat said. ¡°Us against the Cardinals. The Cards had called up this skinny left-hander to pitch against us. Kid¡¯s name was [Steve] Carlton. I believe he went seven innings that day.¡±

It will be different this time for Jim Kaat, this July in Cooperstown, 75 years after his father traveled to upstate to witness the induction of another left-hander, one named Grove. This time, Jim Kaat will be a member of the club.