Throwback Thursday: Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball

By Joe Ovies

By 1994, Nintendo wasn't the only game in town. Sega made a serious run at the Mario maker's dominance with a mix of "edgy" characters like Sonic The Hedgehog (in the cheesiest sense given it was the 90s) and sports titles from Electronic Arts that appealed to teenagers. A quick look at the game sales charts around the that time included classic titles like NHL '94 and Street Fighter II.

Nintendo responded with an edgy marketing campaign of their own, dubbed "Play It Loud!" (again, in the cheesiest 90s way possible). While the flagship exclusive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System during this era was Donkey Kong Country, the company had an earlier hit with Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball.

The baseball game has an interesting mix of realism and arcade-like gameplay. Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball featured every MLB team, a majority of their stadiums, and player stats were based on the previous 1993 season. However, the players are rendered as cartoonish. They'd do things like break a bat over their knee or yell "oh come on!" after a strike out. Players would preen after home runs, knock baserunners over on a tag out, and splat against the outfield wall after misjudging a pop up.

Since Ken Griffey Jr. was the only real world player in the game, Nintendo got around their lack of MLB Player's Association license by assigning real world stats to themed rosters. For instance, the Seattle Mariners consisted of Griffey and Nintendo employees. Other notable roster themes included Motown singers for the Detroit Tigers and former Presidents of the United States on the Kansas City Royals. In the Home Run Derby mode, Griffey would go head-to-head against a character named "Nick Noheart".

Playing Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on our Bull City Gaming Twitch stream, it holds up pretty well for an arcade take on baseball and brought out some competitive smack talk.

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is an interesting footnote for both Nintendo's history and Major League Baseball ownership. The game exists and has Griffey's involvement because Nintendo had recently purchased the Seattle Mariners in 1992. Prior to the sale, the Mariners were rumored to be on the move. Given Nintendo of America was based in Redmond, Washington and the area's strong ties to Japan, locals looked to the parent company to invest.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo from 1949 to 2002 and, decided to buy the Mariners for $125 million and keep them in Seattle. The sale was fascinating in that Yamauchi famously never attended a baseball game in his life and never showed up to watch the club after he bought the team. The sale of the Mariners to Yamauchi also caused division within MLB over foreign ownership. Fay Vincent, MLB commissioner at the time, eventually relented and approved the sale of the Mariners to Yamauchi under the condition he had less than 50% controlling interest (despite being the majority owner). By staying in Seattle and having Nintendo's involvement, the Mariners became a flagship organization for MLB's global reach.

After Yamauchi's death in 2013, Nintendo eventually sold their majority stake of the Mariners for $661 million in 2016.

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