Southen Fried Sushi

In case you haven't noticed, and if you're not from Japan you probably haven't, but Kaz Matsui (above #3) of the Houston Astros is about to join an exclusive club- the Meikyukai. Basically, the Meikyukai is an exclusive club for professional baseball players in Japan. It is a great honor and has very specific criteria- 2,000 hits, 200 wins, and/or 250 saves which can be between Japan and the USA. So, guys like Ichiro and Hideo Nomo are eligible to be in it. However, you apparently have to be a native of the Orient because there are some players- such as Larry Parrish, who have attained the needed numbers, but they are not allowed in. The club chooses who to extend the invites to. If you are in the Meikyukai, you receive some sort of jacket and are then allowed to attend meetings that the group has. I have no clue what they talk about, but it's probably man stuff. Some players, notably Hideo Nomo, have even refused to be in the Meikyukai. And for before I go any further, I need to mention that there is a Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, which is housed at the Toyko Dome, and it is a separate entity from the Meikyukai. The legendary Sadaharu Oh, he of 868 home runs, is the "head" of the Meikyukai at the present time. If and when Matsui, who is considered one of the greatest shortstops in Japanese history, gets his 2,000 hit, he will be presented with his jacket after the game.

When I found out about the Meikyukai, I thought, maybe the Nippon (Japanese) Baseball League has it right in some ways as opposed to the American Hall of Fame. At least with the Meikyukai, there are set standards for membership. There are no politics. You're Barry Bonds, you get 2,000 hits, you're in. Here in America, we have arguements over whether players deserve to be in becuase of the most trivial things. "He was mean to the press", Well, he got into a brawl one time", and on and on and on. It is not a coincidence that there has never been a player ever unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame. The player with the highest percentage was not Babe Ruth or Willie Mays, but Tom Seaver of all people- no offense to Tom, but he did not have the impact on the game that a Ruth did and he was not as great as a Willie Mays. One thing that bothers me about the Hall of Fame is that it is voted on by people who have never played the game at the Major League level, did not have to put in the work to get to that level and realize just how hard it is to not only make it to the Big Leagues, but to excel at a high level. And I have yet to understand why these sportswriters fail continuously to separate what the players did on the field vs. their personal lives off of the field. The Hall of Fame is supposed to celebrate people who had phenomenal talent for playing the game, not a place to drag people through the mud. Never mind that these sportswriters do many of the same wrongs that these baseball players did.

And the sportswriters comeback is- "Well, you don't want to go to the Hall of Fame and have your son looking up to a (insert wrongdoing here)." (Awww....You care about the children! How sweet!) My retort is this- when I go to Cooperstown and walk around there with my son, I'm not going to go through every plaque that's up there and say- "Hey, Junior, there's Babe Ruth. He was a womanizer, a glutton, smoked, he got kicked out of a few games, and he was overweight. There's Ty Cobb, son. He was a racist and a dirty player, Oh, and there's Sandy Koufax, he really only played 12 seasons, and was really only good for six or so. He probably should have played a little longer. Ah, Gaylord Perry. Cheater." NO! I'm going to talk about what they did on the field. I'm not going to fly to Albany, New York, rent a car and drive to Cooperstown, New York all the way from Jackson, Mississippi to give my son a morality lesson.

The other thing about the Meikyukai is since it is a separate entity from the Hall of Fame, you have to wonder if someday Pete Rose is going to come up with some similar club. In Japan, you can be in one or the other, or both. This is kind of a novel idea, I thought. It would be an interesting way for Rose to stick it to the Hall of Fame. I think such a club could co-exist with the Hall of Fame. And let's face it, those old players aren't doing anything. They love hanging out with each other at Cooperstown. A few of them, like Yogi Berra, may hang out at spring training as "spring training coaches", but aside from that, they're pretty much open. I think they would be open to hanging out some more and talking about man stuff.

Until next time, Sayonara!