There is little room for perspective in the immediate aftermath of a 9-3 victory over the Dodgers in the home opener at Petco Park.

The Padres on Tuesday were patient, they were aggressive. They were resilient. They were clutch.

“Everything we didn’t do on the road trip, we did today” Venable said. “… Not having a game like that and then to have one just gives you confidence that everything you believed is true.”

Hmmmmm. Don’t know about that quite yet.

We’ll keep the champagne on ice for when a Padres starting pitcher gets out of the sixth inning.

But now we know it’s possible.

Maybe, just maybe, Yonder Alonso’s admonishment before the game was spot on.

“Just 1-5, man,” a super chill Alonso said as he lounged in the chair in front of his locker. “You guys are definitely going crazy on it. It’s 162 games. It’s a long season. We can get on a roll. Then the wins can come in bunches.”

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Every one of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball had at least one stretch in 2012 in which they lost five of six games.

"Half of us are hitting .150,” Venable, sounding a bit irritated, said before going out and tying a career high with four RBI. “If someone thinks that is an example of how the season is going to go, they probably haven’t watched a whole lot of baseball.”

Yes, we can be absolutely certain that even Everth Cabrera is going to top .200 by September.

It’s just when a team loses five of its first six, the stretch is magnified.

Especially when it’s the Padres, who make a habit of being the turtle that falls too far behind.

It’s going to take quite the next 19 games to avoid their third straight losing April and seventh April in the past eight years without a winning record. They haven’t been to the postseason in the past six years.

Even Alonso, the cool cucumber, acknowledged that might not be a coincidence in a roundabout way.

“You can’t win a division in the first month,” Alonso said. “But you can definitely stay afloat.”

Or you can be sunk.

The Padres talked extensively in March about making sure they started quickly. Their desire was to be playing meaningful games in August but also, certainly, to not be irrelevant by the end of May as they were with a 17-35 record to that point in 2012.

A team that had one home run in six road games to start the season -- none in three games in Colorado -- took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Venable’s liner and a 3-2 lead on Hundley’s high fly in the third.

Their other five runs were the result of actual hits with runners in scoring position.

A team that was 9-for-54 (.167) with runners in scoring position the first six games was five-for-11 on Tuesday against their loaded rivals.

“It’s great to be home,” Hundley said after the Padres raised their team batting average to .224 from the .204 it was after their 1-5 trek to New York and back via Colorado. “To break through is great.”

Now, being no hypocrite, Hundley did offer some perspective to ruin the Opening Day high.

“You take it that it’s April 9,” he said. “You don’t put too much stock in it.”