Padres Dominate Giants in MLB’s Mexico City Series

MEXICO CITY — A day before Major League Baseball played regular-season games here for the first time, Nick Martinez, a pitcher for the San Diego Padres, had an idea. Accompanied by a few teammates, he visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Friday, which was a day off for both the San Francisco Giants and the Padres.

On the way to the church, Martinez noticed several shops selling piñatas. He bought a few, hoping they could be smashed by the player of the game after each of the contests.

“Being in San Diego, Mexican culture is very much a part of our culture,” Martinez said. “And being here in Mexico for this series, the piñatas were an opportunity to keep that Mexican culture in our clubhouse.”

So after the Padres defeated the Giants, 16-11, on Saturday, in a slugfest made possible by the conditions of Mexico City, Padres designated hitter Nelson Cruz donned a sombrero in the colors of the Mexican flag as he struggled to break open a Buzz Lightyear piñata. His teammates cheered him on while wearing Mexican lucha libre wrestling masks. And after a 6-4 Padres win on Sunday, first baseman Matt Carpenter sent candy flying onto the clubhouse floor when he busted open a piñata in the shape of a star.

“It was a real short bat,” Cruz explained later of his piñata troubles. He eventually gave up and ripped it open by hand. “If it had been a normal bat, it would’ve been done with one swing.”

For two days at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, the M.L.B. games were a celebration of Mexico and its love of baseball. The league had previously played regular-season games in Monterrey in 1996, 1999, 2018 and 2019. Exhibition contests were played in Mexico City in the past but playing games that mattered in the country’s capital was different.

M.L.B. wanted to do so in Mexico City sooner, but the $166 million stadium, which holds 20,000 fans, wasn’t completed until 2019. The facility is home to the Mexican League’s Diablos Rojos, a team owned by the Mexican billionaire Alfredo Harp Helú, also a part owner of the Padres.

Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world, a metropolis more populous (22 million) than New York City (20 million) and 2,000 feet higher in altitude than Denver, which is home to M.L.B.’s Colorado Rockies and is famously a mile above sea level. It is also the largest city in North America without a franchise in the region’s four major men’s professional sports leagues (N.B.A., N.F.L., N.H.L. and M.L.B.).

Soccer may be the biggest sport in Mexico but baseball has a strong foothold, particularly in certain regions of this country of 127 million people. Given how the Toronto Blue Jays are the M.L.B. team for all of Canada, baseball officials and fans have dreamed about the potential of an expansion franchise in Mexico City.

“It would be a great experience,” said Juan Soto, a star outfielder for the Padres who is from the Dominican Republic. “It makes me think of soccer, where those…