Alex Ramirez's generally jovial, gregarious disposition sometimes makes it easy to forget there's a more serious side to the Yomiuri Giants star.
At an empty Jingu Stadium on Thursday, as the temperature dropped and the clouds moved overhead, there wasn't much cheerfulness in his tone as he expressed his regret at the situation in the Tohoku region after last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
"I knew it was going to be really bad," Ramirez said. "Especially watching the news and things like that. All these fans, all these people have supported me during my career in Japan. So for me to see something like that, was very sad, very painful. The only thing I could do in that situation was pray."