Relocation Rumors
For several years the Mariners had been dogged by rumors that the team's ownership group led by Jeff Smulyan had been considering selling and/or relocating the team to a different city. This was primarily due to low attendance and revenue, the team's losing ways (prior to 1995, they only had two seasons with a winning percentage over .500), and the Kingdome's drab baseball environment.
In 1992, Smulyan's ownership group sold the Mariners to the Baseball Club of Seattle, a consortium led by Hiroshi Yamauchi and later Nintendo of America. As of 2010, they are still the Mariners' owners. Almost immediately, the new ownership group began campaigning with local and state governments to gain public funding for a new stadium.
In an election held on September 19, 1995, the residents of King County voted against a 0.01% sales tax increase to fund the building of a replacement stadium. As a result, the ownership group set an October 30 deadline for local leadership to come up with a plan to finance a new stadium, or they would put the team up for sale.
Read more about this topic: The Double (Seattle Mariners), Background
Famous quotes containing the word rumors:
“It was because of me. Rumors reached Inman that I had made a deal with Bob Dole whereby Dole would fill a paper sack full of doggie poo, set it on fire, put it on Inman’s porch, ring the doorbell, and then we would hide in the bushes and giggle when Inman came to stamp out the fire. I am not proud of this. But this is what we do in journalism.”
—Roger Simon, U.S. syndicated columnist. Quoted in Newsweek, p. 15 (January 31, 1990)