Alex Ramirez, the only foreign player to get 2,000 hits in Nippon Professional Baseball, achieved one of his long-held ambitions on Monday, when the Yokohama BayStars announced he would be their new manager.
Ramirez, a native of Venezuela, is a two-time Central League MVP. He played for the Yakult Swallows, Yomiuri Giants and Yokohama before finishing his career in 2014 with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus in the independent B.C. League. This past season, Ramirez was hired as an advisor to the Orix Buffaloes, but he asked the team to let him leave at the end of the season.
He will take over for outgoing skipper Kiyoshi Nakahata, who quit to take responsibility for the club's poor results, although the organization had been committed to him staying on.