Japanese sports papers and various Web sites on Aug. 17 reported the death of former Central League umpire Kiyoshi Hirako.
The news was released a week after Hirako's death from complications of lung cancer in a Tokyo hospital on Aug. 9. The native of Gifu Prefecture was 73.
After serving as the baseball club manager while a student at Tokyo's Keio University, Hirako began his CL career in 1965. He worked a total of 3,061 regular season games and called plays in five Japan Series and seven All-Star series. He was a supervisor of umpires from 1990 to 1992, working on the transformation from the six-umpire crews to the four-umpire system before retiring.