MLB owners "approved the sale of a controlling stake in the Mariners from Nintendo of America to a group of minority owners" led by Western Wireless Founder John Stanton and retired Microsoft Exec Chris Larson, according to Ronald Blum of the AP. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that the deal "will close Friday or Monday." This will be the "first transfer in control of an MLB team" since Padres Exec Chair Ron Fowler led the purchase of the club in August '12. Stanton will "take over as control person" from current Chair Howard Lincoln (AP, 8/18). SPORTSPRESSNW.com's Art Thiel wrote "absenteeism will not be the case for Stanton, Bellevue-born and a Whitman College graduate who remembers as a boy crying over the 1970 departure of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee." Stanton has said that "owning the Mariners would be 'perhaps the supreme honor for me in my career.'" Besides Stanton's 15-year tenure as a Mariners' stakeholder, he has "invested in two teams in the West Coast League senior collegiate summer circuit, and is part of the group that owns" the the Triple-A PCL Tacoma Rainiers, which is a Mariners farm club. Stanton also has "been active for years in youth baseball." Thiel: "The cynicism that hangs over the franchise like an acid fog ... is felt by Stanton in the same manner as hard-core fans" (SPORTSPRESSNW.com, 8/18).
