“This is Jane Clark.”

Those were the words that Jim Kaat had been waiting to hear some version of for more than three decades. They symbolized the end of a long wait and put to rest age-old questions about a great pitcher’s overall body of work. And they ushered in a new chapter for an 83-year-old who has dedicated so much of his life to the game of baseball.

Following a 25-year playing career in which Kaat won 283 games with five franchises, including the Yankees, he spent 15 years on the baseball writers’ ballot. When his time on the ballot expired, Kaat again got a few chances to get to Cooperstown via the Veterans Committee, a panel of 16 baseball luminaries that can elect candidates who didn’t garner at least 75 percent of the writers’ votes during their initial time on the ballot.

But despite a track record of consistent greatness on the mound, Kaat was unable to get the necessary 12 Hall of Fame players, executives and managers to vote for him at any time during a 20-year window.

“I’ve been on the Veterans Committee ballot four times, so I know the drill,” Kaat said in February from his Florida home. “The Hall lets you know that you’re on the ballot, and they ask you to be near your phone for a half hour at a specific time. If you don’t get a call, that means you didn’t get in. They only call with good news.”

Kaat can’t recall the specific dates and times when his phone didn’t ring, but he’ll never forget the moment when the chairman of the board of directors for the National Baseball Hall of Fame finally dialed his number.

“The time frame on Dec. 5 was from 5:15 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.,” Kaat said. “My wife and I were sitting at home; I didn’t plan a big celebration because I haven’t gotten that call over the years. About 15 minutes had passed, and the phone rang. It was a 917 area code, and I knew that wasn’t a Cooperstown number. But I answered it anyway, and the voice on the other end said, ‘This is Jane Clark.’”

“As soon as those four words came out, my life changed,” Kaat continued. “She didn’t even have to say anything else. There was that flood of emotions. I have known about the Hall of Fame since I was 8 years old. My dad drove there in 1947 to watch Lefty Grove, his favorite player, get inducted. I couldn’t really believe it when I found out that I was a Hall of Famer.”

Since throwing his final pitch in 1983, Kaat has remained gracious, never complaining about being excluded. Comfortable with what he had accomplished, Kaat knew that the outcome was not something that he could control, and he found peace in that.

“I think that during those first few years that I was on the writers’ ballot, I was curious,” said Kaat, who won 16 Gold Glove awards and finished his career with a 3.45 ERA. “My win total was right there with (Hall of Famers) Fergie Jenkins and Robin Roberts, but I also wasn’t naive enough to think that I was in their class. They were much more dominant, winning 20 games several times. For 35 years, people told me that I should be in the Hall of Fame. But my answer eventually became that the reason I wasn’t getting in was that I was never a dominant No. 1 pitcher. I wasn’t a perennial Opening Day starter or an All-Star. I only won 20 games three times — although these days, if you win 20 one time, you really stand out — but I kind of came to grips with it.”

Kaat, who will be inducted this month after being elected by the Golden Days Era Committee, contributed to the sport long after his last pitch. In 1986, he began calling Yankees games on WPIX. He soon moved on to CBS and ESPN, then returned to calling Yankees games — this time on MSG and the YES Network — from 1995 through 2006.

The experience of occupying the broadcast booth during the team’s most recent dynasty provided Kaat with more excitement from baseball than he ever could have imagined as a retired player. It also etched his name — and his voice — into the minds of a new generation of fans; millions of people who never saw him take the hill for the Yankees from May 1979 through the first month of the 1980 season.

“Being a TV analyst for the Yankees is the best local TV job you can have in all of baseball,” Kaat said. “When you couple that with the good teams that they started putting together, it was so much fun. Having (former Yankees bench coach) Don Zimmer there, who I had been friends with since the 1960s, to tell me so much of what was going on during games was so positive. When I walked the streets as a player in New York City, occasionally I would hear someone say, ‘That’s (basketball legend) John Havlicek!’ But after I was doing games on TV and the team was winning championships, I would be walking down Park Avenue and people knew exactly who I was.

“I went into a Starbucks one morning, and (filmmaker) Spike Lee was about five people ahead of me. He heard me talking, and, as he was about to order, he said, ‘Hey Jim, how about that game last night?’ He never even turned around; he just knew my voice. That’s what was so cool about being a local broadcaster.”

The back of Kaat’s baseball card — or to be more current, his Baseball Reference page — might not look identical to those of Hall of Fame pitchers who were enshrined with little suspense, but the Zeeland, Michigan, native led a remarkable, complete and diverse baseball life.

Kaat made his Major League debut with the Washington Senators in 1959, pitching in three games that season and in 13 the following year. In 1961, the organization moved to Minnesota, and as the Twins grew from an upstart team to an American League champion, Kaat’s career had a similar trajectory.

“We went through this wholesome Midwestern town, where they were just thrilled to have big-league baseball,” Kaat said about his nearly 13-season tenure in Minneapolis, during which time he won 189 regular-season games and pitched to a 3.28 ERA. “There wasn’t the type of expectations or the passion that they have in Boston or New York. It was just a really comfortable place to play, and things all came together in the ’60s. We won a lot of games, and being part of the growth of that team was really satisfying. We expected to win every day, and that was a lot of fun. We were a solid team for that entire decade.”

Kaat won 18 games in 1962 and earned his first of three All-Star selections. He matched that win total for a Twins team that reached the Fall Classic for the first time in 1965. In that World Series, Minnesota took on the star-studded Dodgers, led by legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax, that year’s eventual major league Cy Young Award winner.

After the Twins won Game 1, Kaat faced Koufax on a chilly afternoon at Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis.

“Sandy didn’t start Game 1 because of the Jewish holiday, and we knocked Don Drysdale out of the game in the third inning,” Kaat said. “I was pretty relaxed before Game 2; the expectations were pretty low. In the previous four or five years, Sandy’s performance was unmatched in baseball history, so nobody really expected me to win.”

But, as game time neared, Kaat began to believe that he and the Twins had the advantage.

“I had never seen Sandy pitch in person or on TV,” Kaat said. “When we posed for a photo before that game behind the batting cage, that was the first time I had ever met him. It was a cold, gray day in Minnesota, and Sandy asked if we always played in that kind of weather. I thought that we had a good chance at that point because we were used to playing in the cold.”

Kaat and Koufax both put up zeros for the first five innings.

“I was sitting next to (pitching coach) Johnny Sain in the dugout, and I said, ‘You know, if I give up one run, this game is over,’” Kaat recalled. “Well, we scratched across a few runs, and (left fielder) Bob Allison made a great catch that bailed me out of a jam in the fifth inning.”

With Koufax out of the game and the Twins holding a 3-1 lead, Kaat singled in two more runs in the eighth to put the game on ice.

Kaat took the mound two more times in that World Series, but he was unable to match his Game 2 heroics. Koufax pitched shutouts in games 5 and 7, defeating Kaat both times.

“When I look back on [Game 7], I really didn’t feel the overwhelming pressure,” Kaat said. “I knew what was at stake, but I felt like if I gave up a run, that was going to be it. I ended up giving up two runs in about two minutes, and (Twins manager) Sam Mele took me out of the game; he had to play it like it was the ninth inning. We didn’t get a smell off of Sandy. But when it was over, we felt like we would be back. Coming from nowhere and getting there, we felt like that was quite an accomplishment, and so did the people in Minneapolis.”

Kaat won a career-high 25 games the following season, and during a 16-win campaign in 1967, he nearly carried the Twins back to the World Series. Beginning with a Sept. 1 masterpiece, Kaat tossed six complete games in the eight contests he started — along with an eight-inning, two-run performance. He posted a 7-0 record during that stretch with one shutout — a 10-inning gem against the Kansas City Athletics.

With only one team moving on during that era, the 91-win Twins, who finished tied with Detroit one game behind the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox, were deprived of the chance to play in October.

“At the end of the regular season, you would have thought that I was Sandy Koufax,” Kaat said. “I think that if that happened today, when there was a playoff system, what I did would have gotten a lot more attention. It would have really stood out if it helped us get into the postseason.”

In August 1973, the Chicago White Sox claimed Kaat off waivers. His time in Minnesota was up, but Kaat’s days as an elite starter were far from over. In the two complete seasons he spent with the White Sox, Kaat won 21 and 20 games, earning a trip to his final All-Star Game in 1975.

He won 12 games with the Phillies in 1976, giving him at least 10 wins in 15 consecutive seasons. During that same decade and a half, Kaat won at least 15 games eight times.

“I felt like if my career ended after 1975, I probably would have gotten into the Hall of Fame much sooner,” Kaat said. “I led the American League in wins during the decade of the ’60s, and I had two 20-win seasons in the ’70s. The only guy who won more games than me between 1962 and 1975 was (Hall of Famer) Bob Gibson.”

Kaat was not done after the ’76 season, but over the next two years with the Phillies, he was not as effective as he had been, winning a combined 14 games before transitioning to a relief role.

“I think the lack of dominance in those last few years was a factor,” Kaat said about his subsequent Hall of Fame candidacy. “But more than that, I think voters looked at the fact that I won 283 games in 25 years, and that only averages out to about 11 wins a year. When I would talk to writers, that seemed to be the most common theme as to why I wasn’t getting in.

“I was never a strikeout pitcher, and so I think the lack of those strikeouts also affected how voters felt about me. If you look at my base runners per nine innings and my winning percentage, I was right up there with (Hall of Famer) Nolan Ryan. But Nolan had the strikeouts and the no-hitters, and obviously, he’s a much more famous pitcher.”

Kaat’s perspective on his career — and on his candidacy — also acknowledges a paradox about comparing today’s pitchers versus those of his own era. While wins are undoubtedly harder to come by for modern pitchers (note the all-but-total lack of 300-game winners these days), the victories that pitchers such as Kaat tallied often required extra endurance.

“We were our own set-up men and closers when I pitched,” Kaat said. Unlike today’s starters who can earn a win by pitching five solid frames and turning things over to a bullpen stocked with guys who can paint 100 on the black, Kaat had to keep enough in his tank to get through seven, eight or even nine innings, while still holding on to the lead. “We really didn’t leave games until we were one run behind,” he said. “There were no situations where we were taken out if we were winning after six innings.”

Furthering that point, Kaat spoke about a particular scenario that would have played out much differently had it taken place during the current era.

“The most damaging home run I ever gave up to Mickey Mantle was with a one-run lead and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in July of 1967,” Kaat said. “Mickey was hitting, and Elston Howard was in the on-deck circle. I had a 3-1 count on Mickey, and my catcher came out to the mound. He asked me if I wanted to walk Mickey, and I told him that I didn’t want to put the tying run on base, especially with that short porch in right field at the old Yankee Stadium. Well, Mickey hit a ball over the 457-foot sign to tie the game. Then, the game got rained out in the 10th. I pitched the makeup game and gave up one run in the first. I pitched another complete game but lost, 1-0. I always joked with Mariano Rivera that if he was around, he would have come in and got Mickey out. We ended up losing the pennant by one game that year, but if we had a guy like Mariano, I would have won that game, and we would have probably won the pennant.”

Although Kaat’s reign as a dominant starting pitcher didn’t extend into his last seven seasons, those years still included a great deal of success.

“I wasn’t as effective as a starter in Philadelphia,” Kaat said. “They were trying to phase me out; I just wasn’t being used at all in 1979. Then, in a game against the Padres, we came from nowhere to score a bunch of runs, and I was the only pitcher left in the bullpen. I ended up pitching four innings, and we finally scored a run to win the game. Birdie Tebbetts was the Yankees’ scout in the stands, and they just wanted another warm body that was left-handed.”

Kaat was sold to the Yankees in May 1979, and he was immediately thrust into action. By the All-Star break, it had become clear that Kaat could serve a valuable role out of the bullpen, and he pitched in 40 games for the Yankees that season, registering a 3.86 ERA.

“I was really a stranger to relief pitching; I hadn’t done that much of it,” Kaat said. “I did get to adapt to being a relief pitcher with the Yankees. It was a neat experience, playing on that team and getting to know the guys on that team.”

One of the players with whom Kaat had an especially close friendship was his catcher, Thurman Munson. “It was so enjoyable to be his teammate,” Kaat said. “He welcomed me in so easily. Thurman always used to say, ‘Kitty, we’re going to pitch backwards. We’re going to throw fastballs when we are ahead in the count and curveballs when we are behind.’ That’s the way I wanted to pitch; it wasn’t backwards for me.”

Sadly, their relationship was cut short just a few months into Kaat’s tenure, when Munson was tragically killed in a plane crash.

“When Goose Gossage, Bucky Dent and I played for the White Sox, we used to eat at Traverso’s, a little Italian restaurant in Chicago,” Kaat said. “One of the owners was a huge Thurman Munson fan. So, when we played in Chicago in ’79, we all went there on the Tuesday before Thurman died. They closed the restaurant for us, and we had a great time. Then, I woke on that Thursday and heard the news. I played like I was numb for the rest of that year. But it was an honor to play alongside Thurm for a short time.”

Kaat left the Big Apple in the spring of 1980 for another proud baseball town. Still in search of his first championship, he provided St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog with the left-handed reliever he needed. Much like when he was a starter, Kaat proved to be remarkably consistent for almost four years in the Cardinals’ bullpen. In 1982, at the age of 43, Kaat made 62 regular-season appearances for St. Louis before giving the team 2 1⁄3 innings of work in a World Series triumph over the Milwaukee Brewers.

“There are different kinds of thrills, but there’s nothing like being part of a World Series–winning team,” Kaat said. “I remember that with one out in the ninth inning of the deciding game, the security guards came down to the bullpen in St. Louis, and they asked if we wanted to get into the dugout to avoid the pandemonium at the end of the game. But I wasn’t moving until the last out was made. I had been in the big leagues longer than any other professional athlete that had yet to win a championship. I wasn’t doing anything that would jinx it at that point.”

On July 24, an even longer wait will come to an end for Kaat. The ultimate honor for a baseball lifer will become a reality, and not just a recurring dream.

“Looking back on it now, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Kaat said. “It’s been so rewarding because of how long it took. I have so many more people who are as happy for me as I am happy.

“As the great author George Will said to me when I got elected, ‘Justice delayed, ever so sweet.’”