Sale of the Mariners Clears First Hurdle : Baseball: Vincent says Japanese investor won’t have daily control of club. Final approval is expected by team owners today.

Assured that the club’s operations will be directed by Seattle interests, baseball’s major league ownership committee unanimously approved sale of the Mariners Tuesday to a group headed financially by the president of Nintendo Co. Ltd. of Japan.

Published reports to the contrary, Hiroshi Yamauchi will still provide $75 million of the $125 million purchase price, according to a committee source, but he has assured baseball in writing that daily operations will be directed by John Ellis, head of Puget Sound Power & Light, and other Seattle-based members of the purchasing group’s board.

“This venture is not going to be controlled outside North America,” Commissioner Fay Vincent said. “This venture is going to be controlled in Seattle. Mr. Ellis has total authority to run this business. It’s a substantial grant of authority.”

Vincent said Yamauchi would have a passive role limited to approving only certain “extraordinary transactions” such as relocation or a decision to sell the club.

He will have no voice, Vincent said, in baseball or budgetary decisions. It is unlikely the sale would have received committee approval without Yamauchi’s recent guarantees, by which he also agreed to reduce his voting stock from 60% to less than 50%.

The first sale of a major league team to a group fronted financially by a non-North American investor still requires approval of 11 of the 14 American League owners and seven of the 12 National League owners.

That vote will be taken today in New York, when a three-day summer meeting of major league owners continues, but it is considered a foregone conclusion in the aftermath of the ownership committee’s support.

Voting Tuesday as members of that committee were Fred Kuhlmann of the St. Louis Cardinals, George W. Bush of the Texas Rangers, Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, Bud Selig of the Milwaukee Brewers, Bill Bartholomay of the Atlanta Braves, Stanton Cook of the Chicago Cubs and Peter O’Malley of the Dodgers.

O’Malley said he continues to believe that the Pacific Northwest can support major league baseball, but “in the absence of this group, the picture there would have been bleak.” He said the process was accelerated in the last few days by the assurances that Ellis would operate the team, although he added that baseball is an international game and will continue to be “to an even larger extent in the future.”

Jeff Smulyan, who purchased the club from George Argyros for $76 million in October of 1989, will receive $100 million of the $125 million, with the rest going to club operations.

Smulyan said he was happy and relieved to have the five-month process near a conclusion and is hopeful the new owners can be “more successful than I was” in a city that has produced attendance of more than two million only once in 15 years.

Reinsdorf, the White Sox owner, said Tuesday that unless the new owners can find ways to increase revenue, they are certain to lose considerable money, and that there are no guarantees about the future of baseball in Seattle. The Mariners are in sixth place in the AL West.

“What we are saying (to Seattle) is here, you can keep the team, now support it,” Reinsdorf said.