This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Ten days ago, Jake Cronenworth, Nick Martinez and Austin Nola took an off-day trip to visit the Basílica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. On their way, they passed a store that was selling piñatas. Only piñatas.

Nola remarked that it would be cool to buy one of those piñatas for his son. Martinez had a different idea.

"That's when Nick was like, 'We should get one of those for the team,'" Nola recalled.

And a tradition was born.

Nola bought the first piñata. A Buzz Lightyear edition stood out, for no other reason than it was the one he knew his son would have chosen.

As piñatas go, this one was massive, standing nearly four feet tall. It cost 600 Mexican pesos. Nola tried to pay with his credit card, but the store was cash only. Their driver spotted them a few pesos, and the Padres had their first piñata.

A day later, Martinez carried Buzz off the bus and into the clubhouse. Following the game that night -- a wild 16-11 Padres victory in which Nelson Cruz slugged a homer and had five hits -- the tradition began.

Cruz, deemed the team's player of the game, hacked at the piñata while his teammates danced in the background. The next day, Cruz tabbed Matt Carpenter as the player of the game for his go-ahead double. Carpenter took hacks at a second piñata that had been purchased.

The tradition endured stateside. Prior to the team’s recent homestand, a clubhouse staffer bought a few piñatas at Kaelin's Market in El Cajon and stowed them in the equipment room. A dedicated wire with a hook was installed on the ceiling with the express purpose of holding postgame piñatas.

And the Padres have smashed quite a few already.

The tradition works thusly: The piñata-hitter from the team's previous victory gets to choose the next one. Cruz chose Carpenter, Carpenter chose Ha-Seong Kim, Kim chose Brett Sullivan, Sullivan chose Fernando Tatis Jr.

Now the Padres are on their way to Minnesota. They brought four or five leftover piñatas with them on the team plane. But in the event of a highly successful six-game road trip, they might need to purchase one or two more on the road.

"I think the hardest part is going to be finding somewhere to hang them in every clubhouse," said one clubhouse staffer.

Of course, there's a deeper meaning to all this than merely grown men swinging at piñatas. It's a long baseball season. When it feels like a grind, it becomes a grind. When it feels like a party, it becomes a party.

"It's tough to win a Major League Baseball game," said manager Bob Melvin. "When you win, you should celebrate it. Back when I played, it wasn't so much like that. I think now, it's great to see. Because any time you win a game, you should feel good about it."

• All of the team home run celebrations, ranked

Cruz has perhaps the best perspective on these celebrations. He's been in the league for two decades. He's seen the entirety of the evolution.

"It used to be: You win, maybe you drink a beer and stay in your seat, and that's all," Cruz said. "But it's definitely a good point: It's hard to win in the big leagues."

Cruz is fully on board with the piñata celebration. But he has one gripe: The bat is simply a piece of wood someone found at the stadium in Mexico City. It has been taped up with a baseball-bat grip, but ...

"It's too small," said Cruz, who had some issues breaking open Buzz Lightyear with his first few swings.

Part of the charm, says Martinez, the mastermind of the operation.

"Who said it was supposed to be easy?" he added.