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Hideki Irabu stood up, raised his hand in an animated way and drew an imaginary box around the perimeter of his locker at Yankee Stadium. That was Irabu’s blunt way of telling reporters that we shouldn’t invade his space, even if the walls he created with his finger were imaginary. I had never seen a player do that.

When I heard about Irabu’s death at the age of 42 years old on Thursday and heard that the Los Angeles police said it was an apparent suicide, I thought about that clubhouse scene. Irabu was dubbed the Nolan Ryan of Japan and he desperately wanted to pitch for the Yankees, but, once he helped force that into happening, he never seemed happy in New York.

I have no idea what it’s like to relocate to a foreign country and try to succeed in a place where