Today, Major League Baseball team the Seattle Mariners announced that they're going to be wearing Nintendo and Switch 2 logos throughout the 2025 season. This kind of corporate sponsorship wouldn't ordinarily be the most interesting news, but this move is a tip of the hat to a 33-year-old partnership between the two organizations.
The Mariners will wear the Nintendo logo on their home jerseys and the Switch 2 logo on their away jerseys from the March 27 opening day game all way through the regular season and any potential postseason games.
The association between the Mariners and Nintendo goes all the way back to 1992, when then-owner of the baseball team, Jeff Smulyan, was threatening to move the organization to Tampa Bay. If a local buyer did not appear with $100 million dollars within four months, the Mariners would have been forced to abandon their home city and fans.
That's where the late Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi came into the picture. Yamauchi was informed of the Mariners' situation by his son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, who was then president of Nintendo of America, which had its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, a few miles outside of Seattle. Yamauchi offered to front the whole $100 million to keep the Mariners in Seattle as a gesture of goodwill to the city for its role in Nintendo's global success.
At the time of Yamauchi's death in 2013, the Mariners wrote that "his decision in 1992 to purchase the Mariners franchise and keep Major League Baseball in Seattle as a 'gesture of goodwill to the citizens of the Pacific Northwest' is legendary in this region. Mr. Yamauchi will be remembered for his role in moving forward the opportunity for Japanese baseball players to play in the United States. He will forever be a significant figure in Mariners Baseball history."
Yamauchi ultimately ended up putting $75 million into the team, and Nintendo maintained its stake in the Mariners after his death, but the company eventually sold much of that stake in 2016.
To this day, however, Nintendo still has a 10% share of the baseball club, with ads for Nintendo products still showing up from time to time at the stadium.
"Nintendo and the Mariners have been inextricably linked since 1992," Mariners president of business operations Kevin Martinez said as part of today's announcement. "Now, each time the Mariners take the field, our jersey sleeves will help serve as a reminder of all that Nintendo of America has done for the Northwest community and the team. There isn't a better partnership in Major League Baseball. We are grateful for our incredible relationship with Nintendo."
