 Senator Slade Gorton to aid in efforts keep the Mariners in Seattle.He served as a consultant to Seattle-area business leader John Ellis while The Baseball Club of Seattle (led by Nintendo chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi) was negotiating to purchase the team.Major League Baseball stipulated that, as a condition of allowing the team's sale to a group with foreign majority investors, "North American interests" were to run the club's day-to-day operations.