0.11 From here to infinity  (Page 3/9)

It turned out that Nintendo’s Yamauchi was putting up 80 percent of the purchase price of the Mariners at Gorton’s request; the Senator had inserted an extremely lucrative-for-Nintendo amendment in a tax bill a few years before, and Yamauchi now was more than happy to return the favor.

There followed months of what looked from Seattle’s point of view like a backward United States trying to come to terms with the future Seattle had already embraced. Major League Baseball refused to approve the sale of one of its franchises to a Japanese owner, a stance leading Seattle commentators to lecture the national establishment over everything from the city’s self-styled enlightened racial attitudes to the existence of Asia as an untapped source of talent, fans, and money for the American pro baseball industry. Baseball finally relented, but only after Yamauchi agreed to a Nordstromesque arrangement in which he would fund the purchase of the ball club but cede control of it to less wealthy members of the Seattle establishment. Yamauchi also exhibited a Nordstromesque terror of publicity, more or less never consenting to an interview with the media, and keeping his picture out of the Mariners’ media guide.

Outside of Seattle many saw the purchase as either strange or dangerous—the handing over of something as iconic as a Major League Baseball franchise to a Japanese owner seemed to bear terrible symbolism to Americans living east of the Pacific-coast states. But inside Seattle the sale was symbolically perfect, not only because Washington state had always been Asia-looking, but because the sale signaled the passage of Seattle from a one-company town dependent on an outmoded industry to a knowledge-worker town dependent on the far healthier, more diverse, emerging software industry. Both Nintendo and Microsoft, being software companies, represented a future in which a “clean” industry producing the fruits of mental labor took over from a “dirty” industry producing the fruits of physical labor. Who wouldn’t want to turn a chronically losing baseball franchise over to this vanguard? Even I, who had long since given up on the notion that major-league baseball was worth the trouble and money Seattle kept pouring into it, couldn’t keep myself from believing that this ownership—enlightened, demonstrably smart, Asian—could redeem baseball from its hidebound, good-old-boy-constricted past and give Seattle endless World Series championships in the bargain. Seattle, I thought, was now ready to show the world what 21st-century baseball would—and should—look like.

For some reason, it never occurred to me that I was asking the impossible of Microsoft when I requested unfettered access to its campus. I called Pam Edstrom and told her I wanted to write a book about the development of a Microsoft multimedia product. Instead of turning me away, Edstrom acted as an agent and advisor for me, explaining what it would take to get inside Microsoft’s world and arguing on my behalf with company executives. She set up interviews with possible book subjects and lobbied tirelessly on my behalf. The key, she said, was to get one of Microsoft’s four senior vice presidents to allow me into his or her division. As for Gates, she said, “Once one of his senior vice presidents signs off on this, Bill will, too. As long as they’re comfortable, he won’t even ask any questions about it.”