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available By offering to provide 60 percent of the $100 million pur... -
chase price, the Nintendo people weren’t trying to buy a baseball treasure,
such as the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown or one of Babe Ruth’s mustard-
stained uniforms. If anything, the Seattle group would be doing baseball
a favor. Over its 15 seasons, the Mariners franchise has been all but invis-
ible. Never in a divisional race. Never above .500 until last season. Never
willing to bid for any of the expensive free agents.” Joining the chorus
of hooting at baseball’s xenophobia were George Will, Sports Illustrated,
Time, Newsweek and the Washington Post.^9
While the specter of racism was beginning to make them squirm,
Gorton played party politics. He called the managing director of the Texas
Rangers, an affable young fellow named George W. Bush, and told him
his dad would vouch for him as a good guy. Gorton emphasized that he
wasn’t part of a plot to give foreigners control of the game they both loved.
“W” doubtless called the White House, Gorton believes, because the pres-
ident began making calls of his own.
Ellis had impressed the Major League owners’ committee as a “very
capable no-nonsense guy.” In a move that proved decisive, he was per-
suaded to dip into his retirement nest egg, ante in $250,000 and become
the club’s chairman. Yamauchi’s investment would be scaled back to a
“passive” 49 percent. “During this gut-wrenching, six-month ordeal I fre-
quently thought the Japanese were just going to say forget it,” Gorton
recalls. “Major League Baseball drove a hard, humiliating bargain. Ellis
kept everyone talking, even when tempers flared.”^10
onJne11, 1992, u the Seattle Mariners were safe at home—at least until
the next crisis. The Major League owners voted 25-1 to allow the Baseball
Club of Seattle to buy the team from Smulyan. Ellis, who was 63, had
been looking forward to partial retirement. “I wake up in the middle of
the night and think, ‘What’s gotten into me?’” The challenge now, he
said, was to put the Mariners on a firm financial footing for the first time
in their 15-year history.^11
“So we have a baseball team,” Gorton sums up his second at bat while
gazing down at Safeco Field from his law office on the 27th floor of the
sleek skyscraper at Fourth and Madison. “But we still have a pretty lousy
baseball team. And it’s still playing in the Kingdome, which still is not a
Major League ball park. Our lease lasted through the 1996 season. I knew
we weren’t out of the woods, but I didn’t think we’d soon be on the brink
of losing our team all over again.”