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JUPITER, Fla. — Bubble gum. The taste takes you to baseball, wherever that is for you. Perhaps it’s trading Topps on your bedroom floor or playing Little League ball in the springtime sunshine or, for the fortunate few, chewing Big League Chew in the actual big leagues.

And at Cardinals spring training here, bubble gum is part of the culture, not simply a snack to smack but a time-honored, time-passing accessory to the national pastime — almost, in a way, part of the uniform.

“Why does bubble gum and baseball go so well together?” former Cardinals pitcher Brad Thompson said aloud during a visit to the team’s clubhouse. “Why does apple pie and America go so well together, Benjamin? It just fits.”

The Cardinals organization has a deal with the wonderfully named Dubble Bubble, which is produced by the famed candy company Tootsie Roll. Inside the clubhouse, a ballplayer has five options: Original flavor, Original flavor sugar-free, grape, apple or watermelon, each piece wrapped with the tight twisties on the side, each emitting an effervescent scent.

And before a bubble pops, its color pops. There’s that unmistakable light pink or purple or soft green, all reserved for bubble gum and Easter outfits. In the clubhouse, like a kid in a candy store, Lars Nootbaar selects two pieces of gum before each workout (always the original bubble gum flavor, sugar-free). Starter Andre Pallante and closer Ryan Helsley also agree on the sugar-free (“I am a bubble gum fiend,” Pallante said). Outfielder Victor Scott II and prospect Chase Davis pick apple.

“Some pieces of gum have lots of outs in them, and some don’t,” said pitcher Miles Mikolas, who will only chew one flavor — “ground-ball” grape. “So sometimes you need a new piece of gum with lots of outs. ... And always the same flavor in your (pregame) bullpen session. They say when you study for a test and you chew spearmint gum, and then you take the test and chew spearmint gum, it helps you remember the things from when you studied.”

According to Mark Walsh, the Cardinals’ head clubhouse manager in Jupiter and ��ѿ��ý, the team goes through “about eight to 10 cases” each spring, be it in the big league clubhouse, minor league clubhouse or dugouts for both teams in the Grapefruit League games. Each case comes with eight plastic buckets of Dubble Bubble. A plastic bucket has 300 pieces.

“Sometimes,” Walsh pointed out, “if a guy hits a home run, they might dump a bucket.”

The first-round draftee Davis said that chewing gum can help relax a player and reduce stress — and “there have been studies that have been done.”

Studies? Like, by actual science people?

Sure enough, yep, the National Institutes of Health has a 2015 study on its website titled: “Chewing Gum: Cognitive Performance, Mood, Well-Being, and Associated Physiology.”

“I chew a lot of bubble gum during the season — I don’t really chew much in the offseason,” said Helsley, who set the franchise record for saves last season. “I don’t know what it is about being out there on the field, just popping gum. My dad gets on me and my wife, too, because I tend to smack it (when shown on TV in the bullpen). I’m out there chomping on it. ... I think I’m pretty good at blowing bubbles, too. ... I don’t like to chew with it while pitching. I feel like I’m moving my eyes when I chew, so I try to keep them still.”

Jon Jay is back with the Cards — the former outfielder now is a coach. For years, I’ve had images of him in my head blowing bubbles the size of his head.

“I just think it’s something that came naturally,” Jay said. “I think there’s a pretty cool shot of me sliding into home where I’m blowing a bubble at the same time. It’s something you really don’t think about. It’s just a baseball thing, you know?

“Something that’s funny now, my kids, I’m trying to teach them how to blow bubbles. The girls are 8, and they started chewing gum a little bit. So I’m having fun with them with that. ... I’m not a gum chewer. I’m a gum chomper.”

Thompson said some starting pitchers will take their gum wrapper and make them into tiny “lawn darts” and see, between innings, how close they can get to the mound from the dugout. And as for the relievers, “we would try to see how far we could hit the bubble gum with our hat. So, you spit it out of your mouth — totally disgusting — and then take a full on swing with your hat. And it would launch! We’d get it pretty far (over the outfield wall) out into the outfield, which I’m sure the grounds crew loved. Every once in a while, there would be, it’s happened to me, an errant, accidental hat throw that will go on to the field of play.”

Wait, a hat?

“You swing and accidentally let it go — and the hat flies on the field,” he said. “Like a beach ball, they have to call time out. It happened to me in St Louis. And like a real man, I had somebody else go get it. One of the ushers working out there.”