Yamauchi sells M's shares but retains position with club

The Mariners quietly became 100 percent locally owned this summer when Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Yamauchi, doing some estate planning, sold his shares in the Seattle baseball franchise to Redmond-based Nintendo of America (NOA).

But he remains the club's titular head.

"His role remains unchanged, and I still deal with him on a regular basis," Howard Lincoln, Mariners CEO and Nintendo's representative on the club's board of directors, said last night by phone. "This is something he's had in mind from the beginning of his ownership.

"It's really no substantive change in our operation."

Although the transaction was approved unannounced by baseball commissioner Bud Selig in August, it made news yesterday in Japan, when NOA's parent company, Nintendo Corp. Ltd. (NCL) of Kyoto, disclosed the change in its semiannual report to the Japanese securities exchange for publicly traded companies.

Yamauchi received $67 million from NOA for his 32 percent share of the club -- the exact amount of his original investment in 1992 when the club was purchased for $100 million, plus $25 million in operating capital, from Jeff Smulyan.

A source familiar with Mariners ownership said NOA already owned about 22 percent, which makes the corporation about a 54 percent majority owner of the franchise.

The shares of the American minority investors, led by the 29 percent of Chris Larson of Microsoft, are unaffected.

Yamauchi, in his 70s, retired two years ago from the head of the company he founded in 1949. By the early 1990s, the company was the world's premier producer of video games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Pokemon.

He remains on the board of directors of NCL, where he is also a senior advisor. The board, on behalf of its NOA subsidiary, directed Yamauchi to continue handling the Mariners.

The transaction assures that upon the death of Yamauchi, there will be no complications with his personal estate regarding ownership of the Mariners.