The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

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ment. He didn’t care. America had been very, very good to Nintendo and
Gorton-san had been their friend. Yamauchi told his son-in-law he would
finance the investment out of his own pocket.
When Arakawa relayed the latest news from Tokyo, Lincoln was flabbergasted.
A baseball fan, he instinctively understood the perils of being
the guy who signed the checks. Whether at lunch, Costco or Nordstrom’s,
there was sure to be at least one lippy fan who felt the bullpen sucked, not
to mention snarky sports writers. “It’s going to be great for a while,” Lincoln
told Arakawa, “and Mr. Yamauchi will be perceived as a savior. But mark
my words, the day will come when we’ll be attacked by the media, and
you’re going to have people calling you and complaining about the Mariners’
performance.” Little did Lincoln know just how prescient he was. 5*
When Gorton returned from the grueling overseas trip, he was tired
and cranky. He also had a mild case of pneumonia. But on December
23 rd , 1991, he received “the greatest Christmas present I’ve ever had. It
was a call from Minoru Arakawa, who said, ‘Mr. Senator, my father-in-law
says that we have done very well in America. Seattle and the State of
Washington have been very good to us. We’re part of the community.
Therefore if you need $100 million to buy a baseball team, you have $100
million.’ I was instantly restored, but it quickly developed that we were
facing a buzzsaw that ‘We’re not going to have a bunch of goddamn Japs
owning a Major League baseball team.’ With long memories to our Pilots
lawsuit and my recent efforts to force them to share revenues, the team
owners hated me, too. Our only chance was to dilute the racism with local
partners and outflank the opposition with an effective PR campaign.”
John eLLis, Jim’s enterprising younger brother, was one of the first friends
Gorton made in 1956 when he returned to Seattle to stay after his Air Force
stint and joined the Young Republicans. Approached to help give the plan
a leading local face, Ellis was astounded by Yamauchi’s offer and supportive.
But he said his pockets were nowhere deep enough to help.
Meantime, back in Redmond, there were baseball fans at Microsoft
with major amounts of disposable income. When Smulyan announced
the team was for sale, Chris Larson, one of Bill Gates’ best friends, was
disappointed when the boss demurred. A baseball fan since childhood,
* In 2010 when Lincoln was CEO of the Mariners, he received a year-end dubious achievement
award from a Seattle Times columnist for blowing off media criticism of “his consistently
embarrassing on-field product by urging team employees via e-mail to remember
that ‘the dumbest guys in the room are always media guys.’” 6