Miami ? An evening earlier, Pudge Rodriguez’s body language was all wrong as he loafed after yet another passed ball, but now the sun was shining on a new day, and Rodriguez was on third base, pumping his fist and letting the cheers wash over him after the biggest hit of Florida’s embryonic season.

Winning is medicine and magic, healing the aches, sweetening even the sour, and that’s why Marlins owner Jeff Loria bounced into the clubhouse after the season’s first triumph singing, “So much for the power outage, huh?”

It’s a little early for boasts, given Florida’s entire outfield is likely to produce fewer home runs this season than Vladimir Guerrero alone, but you’ll excuse Loria’s exuberance. The Marlins were on the cusp of beginning this season of renewed hope about as mathematically awful as possible. If you don’t think they felt the burden of avoiding that, you didn’t see starter Mark Redman come off the mound shaking his fists in the second inning after striking out Marlon Byrd.

Loria’s new pitcher, Redman, struck out more batters Thursday than he ever had in a major-league game (10). Loria’s new catcher, Rodriguez, had produced two more hits, including the triple that allowed Florida to protect its only lead of the season. Loria’s manager was rewarded for bringing in a reliever early, and his thieves stole bases to stay out of double plays and, from the sunshine to the scoreboard, this afternoon felt as right as the season’s first two games felt wrong.

But let’s be clear about why and how this game was won: The small-ball Marlins opted for a more energy-efficient way to score, jogging leisurely around all four bases at once instead of trying to steal them one at a time. This team will have trouble scoring, and will be hard to watch at times, but it clubbed Philadelphia All-Star Vicente Padilla on Thursday, and it is difficult to say which of the three home runs was most encouraging.

Mike Lowell fighting back from an 0-2 count for a three-run shot? The Juan Encarnacion launch that has his hitting coach hyperventilating about how he can be league MVP? Or the longest of them all, by Alex Gonzalez, who has kept us waiting two years now on the promise that former manager John Boles saw when he said Gonzalez would be better than Edgar Renteria?

As nice as Lowell and Derrek Lee are as players, and as good as Rodriguez has been at roping the ball in the first three games, the Marlins lineup still lacks a certain presence. There is no way to measure this empirically, obviously, but you know it when you see it. Or, more accurately, feel it.

The Marlins, built on speed and defense, don’t have anything like that in their lineup now that Cliff Floyd is gone. You can’t when your game plan is to peck teams to death.

What they lack in power, the Marlins promise to make up for in those peppy sports intangibles of “fire” and “pride” and “hunger,” all of which sound very nice in self-help books and commencement speeches but are virtually irrelevant in this sport. This fickle game rewards desire less than any of our other games. In baseball, excellence is not a matter of will.

The fist-pumping Marlins will work and peck and fight this season.

But, as Thursday proved, it is better to just club them.