SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Playoff baseball is underway, and there's no major league team hotter than the New York Mets, late in in comebacks, playoff grand slams, and now the league championship series. If you asked them how it all happened, they might point back to June when a ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by a big purple blob.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Introducing the ultimate baseball fan all the way from McDonald Land, please welcome the one, the only Grimace.
SIMON: Yep. Grimace, the purple Big Mac lover, friend of Ronald McDonald and giant blob who allegedly represents a taste bud. Evan Drellich is a reporter at the Athletic who covers the business of baseball.
EVAN DRELLICH: And nobody would have paid attention to it. I don't think, unless the Mets hadn't started winning that day.
SIMON: Two games in a row, three games, five - finally seven straight wins in June after that first pitch, and in a sport rife with superstition, Met fans latched on.
DRELLICH: The big cuddly purple Grimace costume, all of a sudden, became an emblem and a talisman to Mets fans.
SIMON: The Mets already had a mascot, Mr. Met. Kind of like their BJ Leiderman, who does our theme music. So the team was slow at first to put their arms around Grimace.
DRELLICH: They have started to embrace Grimace here and there. They used his image in a video announcing the 2025 schedule. But by and large, they let the fans take off with it and run with it.
SIMON: Grimace became a fixture in the stands as fans began to show up in costume.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You want to get on TV at City Field? Wear a Grimace costume. We'll never know who you are, but you made it somehow.
SIMON: And in September, the Mets honored Grimace with a City Field seat painted purple.
DRELLICH: In my 15 years of covering baseball, I can't remember something quite like this where some other business' image was basically coopted by a fan base.
SIMON: But the biggest display of this cross-corporate devotion came this past Tuesday when the Mets hosted the Philadelphia Phillies for a pivotal playoff game, images of Grimace were plastered on the No. 7 train, which goes to City Field. Then Grimace himself rode the train.
DRELLICH: When Grimace is walking onto a subway car, you see these Mets fans just screaming up and down.
UNIDENTIFIED FANS: (Chanting) Grimace, Grimace, Grimace...
DRELLICH: Grimace walks onto the train car and starts jumping up and down with them, and it's just this - it's really very sweet.
SIMON: Aww. McDonald's doesn't just let any bush leaguer slip into a purple jersey and be Grimace.
DRELLICH: They have two people who play Grimace, and Grimace has to show up, and Grimace has its own mannerisms, and Grimace also comes with a handler.
SIMON: How do you handle a Grimace? The Mets would go on to beat the Phillies 7 - 2, win the series the next day. So is Grimace the real secret sauce of victory?
DRELLICH: I don't think there's any way you could say Grimace is not working. If you had asked people a month ago or even a couple of weeks ago, whether they would be one round away from the world series, I think most people would have looked at you sideways, and that was not really the expectation going into the season.
SIMON: But wait, McDonald's has to sell hamburgers all over the world, not just to Mets fans. Will Grimace's new embrace of the Mets disenfranchise Philly fans, Dodger fans, and for that matter, fans of Manchester United and Europe's premier football league, or the Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese Baseball League? Evan Drellich says...
DRELLICH: McDonald's said that Grimace is a fan of all teams, but has a special place in its heart for the Mets.
SIMON: And Mets fans have a special place in their hearts for the purple blob, as long as they win.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN FOGERTY SONG, "CENTERFIELD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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