Et Cetera

After five months of debate, major league baseball owners gave a thumbs-up to the $125 million sale of the Seattle Mariners to an investment group headed by Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo in Japan. The owners waved the deal through because Yamauchi agreed to limited decision-making power. Said American League president Bobby Brown: "The offshore interest has investment but not much to say about how the franchise is operated." (See related story on page 63.