Here's the Akiyama card for my Meikyukai collection. The original post about him can be found
here. I'll add a little more to it.
Akiyama was a power-speed threat, hitting 437 home runs and stealing 303 bases in his career. He was the first Japanese player to lead the league in both categories in the same year. He won an MVP award in 1987 to go along with eleven consecutive gold glove awards. The first twelve years of his career were spent with the Lions, who were the powerhouse team of the 1980s. They finished in first place nine times during his tenure. After the 1993 season he was traded to the Daiei Hawks. Let's take a look at this deal.
The deal was Akiyama, Takehiro Hashimoto and Katsuyoshi Murata for Makoto Sasaki, Tomio Watanabe and Tomoyuki Uchiyama. Hashimoto was a poor relief pitcher who would go on to have a few solid seasons with his new team. Murata was just 23 but had developed into a reasonably good starting pitcher, who would promptly lose it and wash out of baseball after his age 27 season. Sasaki looks to have been a star, albeit one coming off of a down year. His skill set was basically the same as Akiyama's just not as advanced. Watanabe was a pitcher with some success in his past, but who missed the entire season (presumably with an injury) and would never be the same. Uchiyama was a promising young relief pitcher who didn't amount to much.
So this deal looks, essentially, to have been Akiyama for Sasaki, with lots of filler. Akiyama was clearly the bigger star, but he was on the wrong side of 30. Seibu got a younger-but-worse version of him in Sasaki. This looks like one of those headline grabbing deals, but one that didn't end up making much difference. Maybe the Hawks got the better end of it, if only because Hashimoto was the only one of the filler players to have real value post-trade?
After retirement Akiyama became the Hawks' manager and led them to victory in the 2011 Japan Series. In total he won the Matsutaro Shoriki Award three times, which ranks second all-time to Oh's four. (This award is given to the person - sometimes a player, sometimes a manager - who has done the most to develop professional baseball. No, I don't know what that means. Winner list
here.)
Meikyukai -
Yes : Hall of Fame -
Yes
My card is from the 1998 Calbee set, after the trade to the Hawks.