John Blanchette: Howard Lincoln’s departure from Mariners worthy of a parade
“I got you this far,” M’s fans can imagine him saying. “My work is done.”
Depending on your level of engagement, the sound you heard Wednesday afternoon was either a collective sigh or the wail of “Good riddance!” pinballing off Mts. Rainier, Baker, Hood, Borah and coming to rest out here in the scablands after the chairman and CEO of the Mariners recused himself — more or less.
His retirement was all part of a blockbuster transaction — or transition, as the principals called it — that saw the M’s 17 minority owners buy out all but 10 percent of Ninetendo Of America’s majority stake, for an estimated $640 million. Ascending to the role of “controlling” officer is John Stanton, a billionaire who grew up in Bellevue and cleaned up in the cellular business — and it may well be that the M’s have found their Paul Allen, or better.
Of course, it could be Mike Stanton or Harry Dean Stanton and fans still would be going into their home run trots. As long as it’s not Howard Lincoln.
You saw “The Revenant?” To the baseball inclined of the Northwest, Howard Lincoln was “The Revilement.”
Was this 100 percent fair? Of course not.
But it was no less fair than Mariners devotees having to endure the baseball apocalypse over which Lincoln has lately presided. Only the Buffalo Bills among big-league sports teams have spent more years out of the playoffs than the Mariners, who are 14 years into an on-spec job of shrinking the fan base.
In that time, the constituency has watched a parade of general managers (five) and managers (10), including interims, herd an even longer parade of flotsam through the clubhouse. All the while the one constant in the equation was Howard Lincoln, which did not go unnoticed.
Nor did it go unnoticed back in 2002 when he proclaimed that the “goal of the Mariners is not to win a World Series — it is to field a competitive team year after year.” Or in 2006 when he said, “The entire organization, and especially me, is on the hot seat.”
Apparently, Howard buys asbestos trousers in bulk.
“I would have liked a few mulligans along the way,” he allowed on Wednesday.
Lincoln hired badly and did public relations worse. If he’d been even a smidgen better at those things, people wouldn’t have forgotten how key a player he was in keeping the Mariners in Seattle when Jeff Smulyan was trying to pirate them off to St. Petersburg 25 years ago, a la Clay Bennett. It was Lincoln’s relationship with Nintendo patriarch Hiroshi Yamauchi that got the video giant involved, and kept Seattle from being a two-time loser in the baseball franchise business.
Unfortunately, that relationship also required that he be the one to sit in the big chair. It wasn’t a fit.
This does not figure to be the case with Stanton, whose love for baseball is reflected in his investment in wood-bat summer teams in Yakima and Walla Walla, and in coaching his sons’ youth teams. Every bit as important is an avowed devotion to the city where he grew up and made his fortune.
He recalled that he “cried as a teenage boy” when the Pilots pulled out after one year at old Sick’s Stadium and were hijacked to Milwaukee. He also noted that, as a minority owner of the NBA Seattle SuperSonics, he voted against the sale to the carpetbagger Bennett.
“I don’t think there was a risk of the team leaving town because Howard had decided to retire,” Stanton said, “but everyone in ownership had it in the back of their minds that this is one of the few communities in the country that had lost two sports teams.
“And a goal even greater than winning a World Series is the commitment to keep this team in this town.”
So when Lincoln informed the other partners of his retirement plans, and Nintendo’s willingness to sell, it was up to Stanton to marshal the other owners to head off a bidding war. That more or less meant accepting the valuation of the franchise at $1.4 billion — a figure that can make even rich guys swallow hard.
“The number one goal of this ownership team is to win a World Series,” Stanton said “We want to win a World Series here in Seattle and have a parade and celebration for that event. I think that it’s time that we had that accomplishment.”
Well, it’s past time. But so is having a CEO in place with the business and baseball acumen to get the franchise there.
The M’s have the man. It’s his job to get them home.