SAN DIEGO _ The Chris Paddack era began at 1:11 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, the last day of March.
It was 81 degrees. Paddack's first pitch was a 93 mph fastball that Steven Duggar skied high into the blue sky. It fell into the glove of left fielder Wil Myers just inside the left-field foul line.
Those are details you'll want to know in order to claim you were there.
The Padres offense showed up just in time to keep Paddack from taking the loss in his major league debut and then did just enough to beat the Giants 3-1, their third win in the season-opening four-game series.
After Paddack allowed one run on two hits and a walk in five innings, the Padres tied the game in the bottom of the fifth when Franchy Cordero walked, went to second on a high throw trying to double him up and scored on Eric Hosmer's single.
In the seventh, after the Giants had loaded the bases by intentionally walking Hosmer, Manny Machado hustled out a grounder to just beat out what would have been an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the seventh inning to drive in his first run as a Padre.
Myers' bunt single led off the eighth inning. He went to second when Fernando Tatis Jr.'s grounder slipped under Pablo Sandoval's glove and into left field and scored on Austin Hedges' single.
Adam Warren (1-0) pitched the sixth and seventh, Craig Stammen the eighth and Kirby Yates a perfect ninth for his third save.
All that will possibly be a footnote to history, as Paddack, the most celebrated Padres pitching prospect since Jake Peavy arrived in San Diego in 2002, delivered in his first start.
The run on him came with two outs in the fifth inning when Sandoval lined a double to left-center field on the 10th pitch of his at-bat. That scored Brandon Belt, who had worked the only walk against Paddack.
Paddack left to an ovation after getting the next batter on a fly ball.
The 23-year-old right-hander, facing a lineup stacked with seven left-handed hitting Giants, finished with seven strikeouts.
Padres starting pitchers, the team's perceived shaky link, has so far been the Padres' bond. The fur starters have allowed two runs in 21 1/3 innings.
Eric Lauer went the longest, six innings in the opener. Lauer and Joey Lucchesi, who went 5 1/3 innings Friday, did not allow any runs. Nick Margevicius lasted into the sixth inning before being lifted when he surrendered a lead-off single.
Even with the shortest outing of the group, Paddack was arguably the most impressive.
He was certainly the most anticipated, having been acquired in the 2016 trade that sent Fernando Rodney to the Marlins and then come back from Tommy John surgery late that summer to dominate at Single-A and Double-A last year and impress everyone who saw him in spring training.
Almost 40 family members and friends and his high school baseball coach made the trip from Texas, sitting a few rows behind the Padres dugout. Fans wore pins featuring a sheriff's badge with "Paddack's Posse" written in rope script. At least a couple team employees sported bolo ties. Executive chairman Ron Fowler's wife, Alexis, spent part of the game watching from the front row wearing a cowboy hat.
