Meikyukai


The Meikyukai is one of the two baseball halls of fame in Japan. The Meikyukai is a company ltd. for public benefit.
Founded by Hall of Fame pitcher Masaichi Kaneda in 1978, the Meikyukai honors players born during the Shōwa period. Players are automatically inducted if they reach career totals of 2,000 hits, 200 wins, or 250 saves in the Japanese professional leagues.
Inductees are awarded a special jacket, and participate in various baseball-related events during the off-season. Meikyukai members mostly makes appearances in charity and volunteer events, and holds annual meetings and a golf tournament, which is often broadcast on television. All of the money raised from the golf tournament is donated to the Red Cross.

History

Kaneda founded Meikyukai on July 24, 1978. In addition to Kaneda, the founding members of the club were Kazuhisa Inao, Masaaki Koyama, Keishi Suzuki, Tetsuya Yoneda, Shinichi Etoh, Sadaharu Oh, Morimichi Takagi, Masahiro Doi, Shigeo Nagashima, Katsuya Nomura, Isao Harimoto, Yoshinori Hirose, Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Takao Kajimoto, Mutsuo Minagawa and Minoru Murayama.
Hiromitsu Ochiai reached 2,000 hits in 1995, but declined membership because Kaneda and other members had repeatedly criticized him during his career.
First baseman Kihachi Enomoto didn't decline membership, but never participated in any of the club's meetings or events, and was not recognized as a member.
In 2008, founder Masaichi Kaneda passed on club leadership to home run champion Sadaharu Oh after running it for more than 30 years.
The most recent inductee is Takashi Toritani, who got his 2000th career hit on 8 September 2017.

Qualifications for inclusion

The founding members of the club limited membership to players born after 1926, partly because they only wanted members that had begun their career after the two-league system of Japanese baseball was established in 1950, but mostly because Kaneda did not want to include qualified members, such as Tetsuharu Kawakami, that were older than he was. According to current regulations, only players born between 1926 and 1988 can join, but the rules will probably be changed for younger players to be inducted in the near future.
Records in Major League Baseball are also valid in counting the numbers; However, Meikyukai only takes records from the point where the player started his NPB career. For example, Alex Ramírez's 86 hits in MLB before his NPB career were excluded and he was not inducted until he recorded his 2,000th NPB hit on April 6, 2013.
Though other records such as home runs, stolen bases, and strikeouts are not officially included in the qualifications, Yutaka Fukumoto was specially inducted when he reached 800 career stolen bases.
Nationality is not officially regarded as a qualification, but since MLB records before starting a NPB career do not count, only one non-Japanese player so far has met the milestone.

Members