Former Fresno State two-sport dynamo Satoshi ‘Fibber’ Hirayama passes away at 91

Satoshi “Fibber” Hirayama, who at 5-foot-3 and 140 pounds was one of the most dynamic athletes in Fresno State history and a baseball pioneer in the San Joaquin Valley and in Japan, passed away Wednesday morning.

The first Japanese-American to be an All-Star in the Japanese professional leagues, Hirayama after his playing career ended was a teacher and administrator in the Clovis Unified School District, retiring in 1991. He was a father. He was a coach. He was a scout for the then-California Angels and the Hiroshima Carp, the team he had played with in Japan for 10 seasons and twice was an All-Star. And, for the Bulldogs, he was a two-sport star, playing football as well as baseball, and in 2017 had his No. 3 retired in a ceremony at Pete Beiden Field at Bob Bennett Stadium in a venue named after his former coach and one of his former teammates.

“I used to always joke with him that Babe Ruth would be proud of you wearing his number,” said Kerry Yo Nakagawa, founder and director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project.

Hirayama, who had been in declining health the past few years, was 91.

He is survived by his three sons, Colin, Kevin and Brian, and five grandchildren. His wife, Jean, whom he had met while attending Fresno State, passed away in 1991.

Funeral services have yet to be set.

“A monumental loss,” Nakagawa said. “He was super special. Fibber was always so much bigger than life and such a gentle giant. He has an amazing legacy at Fresno State. For me, he was like our Central Valley Jim Thorpe. He went on to be a professional baseball player in Japan, an All-Star wherever he went.”

The Valley’s Jim Thorpe

“What always impressed me about Fibber was just how humble he was,” said Paul Loeffler, the radio voice for Fresno State football, basketball and baseball broadcasts. “Most people, if they met him, would have no idea he was one of the greatest athletes the Valley has ever produced, or what his significance was internationally.

“He was just a humble, down-to-earth guy and just a great ambassador for the game, for Fresno State, for the Valley and for the Japanese-American baseball community. He’s one of those people who is at the top of so many lists and another guy, like Bob Bennett, like Boyd Grant, like so many who we have lost in the past couple of years, you just don’t expect them to ever leave because they’re so larger than life. And when you’re larger than life and you’re 5-3, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

Hirayama, an Exeter native, spent three years behind barbed wire during World War II at the Poston War Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona, one of 10 internment camps at which 120,000 Japanese-Americans, the majority U.S. citizens, were imprisoned during the war.

Internees dubbed three Poston camps Roastin’, Toastin’ and Dustin’ due to the extreme climate and conditions.

“I remember my dad being scared,” Hirayama told The Bee in 2017, prior to having his jersey retired. “I remember that we were in this one little apartment, which had one potbelly stove in it. I can remember the sand storms that used to come through and we couldn’t see the barracks.”

Following the war, Hirayama graduated from Exeter Union High and went on to Fresno State, where he played football and baseball.

Dubbed “Fibber” because his father struggled to pronounce his birth month, February, Hirayama played halfback and on special teams in football and center field on the Bulldogs baseball team.

Hirayama as a sophomore in 1950 helped lead the Bulldogs to their first conference championship under Beiden and the following season they went 36-4. In his senior season, Fresno State advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time. He once stole five bases in a game, hit .420 in his sophomore season. He finished his career with 71 stolen bases, a school record that stood until it was broken by former Major League outfielder Tom Goodwin.

The Bulldogs’ two-sport star was inducted into the Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989 along with former Major League pitcher Dick Ruthven, football coach Darryl Rogers, tennis player Glenn Hippenstiel, wrestler Michael Gallego and Roosevelt, Fresno and McLane High baseball coach Ollie Bidwell.

A terror on the bases, and the football field for Fresno State

“I wish I could go back in time and watch him play, because he was returning kicks and playing in the backfield on the football field, he’s playing center field with reckless abandon for Fresno State,” Loeffler said. “Just incredibly fast, tremendous base stealer, a guy who could really hit.”

Hirayama, who was on a football scholarship when at Fresno State, signed with the St. Louis Browns baseball team after college, playing in 1952 for the Stockton Ports. He went into the military the following year and after his discharge signed with the Carp, his career cut short after he suffered an eye injury crashing into an outfield wall.

But through those years the connection to the Valley and Fresno State never was broken.

“He was an amazing man,” Fresno State baseball coach Mike Batesole said. “I would have him come in and talk to the team once a year and it didn’t have anything to do with the great player that he was, it had everything to do with the toughness and learning how to fight through the stuff that he had to fight through in his life and coming out at the other end.

“I’ll tell you, the team would be captivated. Some guys just have ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is, and he had it. Our kids really enjoyed listening to him. He was small in stature, but he was a big man … respect, a lot of respect.”

Friendships forged in Exeter before and after the war and at Fresno State also endured. Hirayama into his late 80s would drive to Visalia from Fresno to visit former Bulldogs’ teammate Tex Clevenger in a senior care facility, a trip that included a stop at Exeter Cemetery to visit the graves of his father and mother, Tokuzo and Toka, and former Exeter High teammates Lyle Barnett, Bruce Myers and Sonny Galloway.

“I’ll never forget coming back to Exeter, coming back to school and six of my dear friends were still friends when I got back,” Hirayama told The Bee in 2017. “They took really good care of me because the word ‘Jap’ I heard quite often. You know, ‘Get the Jap back to camp’ or whatever. And my friends, they all stood up for me and I’ll never forget that. They were wonderful.”

Barnett, Myers and Galloway all were among those six friends.

“He had an incredible life when you consider everything he went through from being hauled out of his home and sent to an internment camp in Arizona, playing baseball in the camps, coming back and going to Exeter High and then playing at Fresno State, football and baseball,” Loeffler said. “And when you think about it, 10 years after the atomic bomb, he’s the first Japanese-American to play in the Japanese professional leagues, in Hiroshima, and what that meant for so many people … and that’s just his playing career.”

“He’s in a better place for sure,” Brian Hirayama said. “He had an amazing life. He was unbelievable.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 7:00 AM.