Mariners to be sold by Nintendo to ownership group led by John Stanton
- Thread starter HriniakPosterChild
- Start date
What is left unsaid in this quote from Lincoln speaks volumes: Lincoln said the biggest challenges in his tenure were initially getting MLB to accept Yamauchi and the Japanese ownership group, then building Safeco Field.
There was no ellipsis indicating elided words: then [getting the taxpayers to pay for] building Safeco Field.
There was no ellipsis indicating elided words: then [getting the taxpayers to pay for] building Safeco Field.
Spare a moment's thought for Hiroshi Yamauchi, who passed 2 years ago. His visionary zeal and midas touch with game and console ideas took Nintendo from a backwater playing-cards company into the primary force shaping the evolution of the modern video game industry. And when his USA operating company, based in Seattle, asked him to help find a Japanese buyer for the Mariners (lest they leave the area and disappoint his many baseball-fan employees), he bought the team sight-unseen, to keep them happy. And thereby kept them in Seattle. And also enabled the flow of Japanese (and, later, other Asian) talent to come to MLB, since there was now a Japanese owner.
Criticize the managerial problems resulting from his lack of oversight if you will. He certainly was never a baseball fan, and never acted as if he were. But while TBS buying the Braves or the Tribune buying the Cubs (or Rogers Comms buying the Jays) had a profit motive attached, his purchase had, essentially, only altruistic motives. It may have motivated Henry Kaufman's entrusting the Royals to KC in perpetuity. So with today's announcement, thus ends a quite unique era in the ownership of sports, and one with many positive consequences.
Criticize the managerial problems resulting from his lack of oversight if you will. He certainly was never a baseball fan, and never acted as if he were. But while TBS buying the Braves or the Tribune buying the Cubs (or Rogers Comms buying the Jays) had a profit motive attached, his purchase had, essentially, only altruistic motives. It may have motivated Henry Kaufman's entrusting the Royals to KC in perpetuity. So with today's announcement, thus ends a quite unique era in the ownership of sports, and one with many positive consequences.
Your point is a very good one, TPiW, and it is worth nothing that he made this altruistic gesture at a time of anti-Japanese xenophobia in the US. They were buying Manhattan, one block at a time. They were buying the masterpieces of western art. There were stories told of "a rich Japanese man" who would cruise the streets of Honolulu, spot a house that he liked, and send his chauffeur to the door to buy it. Sounds dubious now, but it was repeated a lot in the late 80's and early 90's.
Why would they stop at one major league baseball team? The notion that America's Pastime would be entrusted to the race that bombed us at Pearl Harbor was frightening, and the powers that be inside MLB insisted that American Ownership was sacrosanct. Except that there were teams in Canada, so, uh, it was NORTH American Ownership that was sacrosanct. So, the compromise was that the M's Guy In the Room when MLB owners had their meetings had to be an American, uh, NORTH American guy. (I do wish one of the teams had sent a Mexican, to test the hypothesis.)
Mr. Yamauchi was entitled to take his yen and go home in the face of that hostility, but he didn't. And without that generosity (and the generosity of the taxpayers in my state), I wouldn't be taking my son to MLB games twice a month.
Why would they stop at one major league baseball team? The notion that America's Pastime would be entrusted to the race that bombed us at Pearl Harbor was frightening, and the powers that be inside MLB insisted that American Ownership was sacrosanct. Except that there were teams in Canada, so, uh, it was NORTH American Ownership that was sacrosanct. So, the compromise was that the M's Guy In the Room when MLB owners had their meetings had to be an American, uh, NORTH American guy. (I do wish one of the teams had sent a Mexican, to test the hypothesis.)
Mr. Yamauchi was entitled to take his yen and go home in the face of that hostility, but he didn't. And without that generosity (and the generosity of the taxpayers in my state), I wouldn't be taking my son to MLB games twice a month.