| It was a chilly night in Queens, and the New York Mets' bats were especially cold. But, as Businessweek's Max Chafkin writes, the team's meme strategy is the hottest in baseball right now. Plus: A breakout seltzer hit, a company working toward a brain science breakthrough, and AI's power plant pitch. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. By any objective measure, the New York Mets are the weakest of the four teams still competing in Major League Baseball's postseason. Among the Cleveland Guardians, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Mets had the poorest regular-season record and are the only team that didn't win its division. The conventional wisdom at the end of May was that the Mets were likely to trade away their best players and tank before the season ended, a view held not only among fans and sportswriters but also by at least one of the team's players, who publicly proclaimed them "the worst team in the whole f---ing MLB." And yet the Mets are strong—world-class, even—in what might be the most important domain when it comes to building a fan base in the 21st century: memes. There's "OMG," which refers to the viral Latin pop song written by the team's utility infielder Jose Iglesias, now ubiquitous at Citi Field: on hoodies, on signs and constantly blaring from the stadium speakers. There's "Gay Mets," referring to a win streak that coincided with a Pride Month promotion and the release of some rainbow merch. There's a whole thing with a 97-year-old World War II veteran named Seymour Weiner who became the face of the team's $1 hot dog promotion, and another with a "playoff pumpkin" that the team's first baseman acquired at a Wisconsin patch before the gourd itself acquired magical powers and started appearing on T-shirts. And then there's Grimace.  Get Grimace a bat! Photographer: Adam Hunger/Getty Images North America In June, when the Mets were still terrible, the team had the puffy purple monster from the McDonald's cinematic universe throw out the first pitch, while a mostly empty and indifferent stadium watched. I'm not sure why this objectively lame corporate tie-in—McDonald's has sponsored the Mets for a decade—so thoroughly captured the imagination of fans and set the Mets on a collision course with destiny. I assume that astrophysicists, philosophers, epistemologists and McKinsey consultants will study this for years and still struggle to articulate what exactly happened. But fans embraced the ridiculousness, the Mets started winning like crazy, and everyone decided Grimace was the reason.  A purple seat in honor of Grimace at the Mets' home stadium in September. Photographer: Dustin Satloff/Getty Images North America McDonald's is making the most of the moment. Grimace has reappeared at several games, received his own special purple seat at Citi Field and taken over the brand's social media accounts. Last week, the fast-food chain paid to put Grimace's face on trains on New York's 7 line—the subway that runs to the stadium—and this week there was a billboard in Times Square taking credit for the Mets' success. "It wasn't luck. It wasn't fate," the sign proclaims. "It was Grimace." There's a business story here, of course, or maybe several. The Mets' unlikely turnaround is at least partly thanks to a series of savvy moves that started last year, when the team managed to offload two of its biggest and most expensive stars. It continued in the offseason when the team, under newly hired general manager David Stearns, opted to avoid signing high-priced free agents and instead brought in a motley collection of veteran pitchers and position-player castoffs. Iglesias, the songwriter-slash-second baseman, had begun writing music because he believed his professional baseball career was more or less over. He had the highest batting average of anyone on the team this year and just released an OMG remix that features Pitbull. As a marketing case study, the Grimace thing shows how traditional corporate partnerships can take on new meaning, and momentum. Grimace exploded as a meme not because the Mets and McDonald's planned it, but because the two brands were quick to recognize a culture of fandom and to embrace and nurture it. Something similar seems to be happening with Ellie, the suddenly omnipresent and TikTok-famous mascot of the New York Liberty. (The Liberty, by the way, are one win from a Women's National Basketball Association championship. Coincidence?) Last night, I took the 7 train with my son to watch Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. It was a very cold night, and the Mets lost, 8-0, but the stadium was packed and the crowd was noisy. Ticket prices on the secondary market have been way up—much higher than for the Yankees, who have a larger fan base and a longer history of success—and there was a sense that no matter what happened we were all going to scream like crazy. There were playoff pumpkins, OMG signs, Grimace T-shirts and even full-on costumes. The baseball was bad, but the vibes were good. Correction: Yesterday's newsletter misspelled the last name of former federal prosecutor Priya Sopori, a partner at the law firm Greenberg Glusker. | 
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