Toronto ? One pitch. One swing.

Ivan Rodriguez drove Roy Halladay’s first offering of the sixth inning into Toronto’s bullpen. And as soon as it left Pudge’s bat, Halladay dropped his head in disgust. The reigning Cy Young Award winner made a mistake, and he wasn’t accustomed to facing Tigers hitters capable of making him pay for it.

As he touched home, Pudge kissed two fingers and saluted the heavens. And back in Detroit, more than a few frustrated baseball fans offered thanks as well.

One game. One victory.

A season-opening victory, let alone a shutout, is nothing short of a gift from the gods for an organization reduced to a national punch line after an American League-record 119 losses last year. But nobody was laughing Monday at SkyDome after the Tigers’ 7-0 victory.

“It’s important in that for at least one day,” said general manager Dave Dombrowski, “people can’t look at us and say, ‘Same old Tigers,’ and that’s worth appreciating even though you don’t want to get carried away with what’s only the first game of 162.”

Dmitri Young’s reaction was far more succinct.

“Screw last year!” snarled one of the few remnants of 2002’s 0-11 start and last year’s 0-9 beginning.

The bigger victory was that the Tigers seized full advantage of an opportunity to offset the skepticism of the last decade. The Red Wings begin their playoff push Wednesday. The Pistons open their second season in another couple of weeks. The Lions approach their annual Super Bowl (i.e. the NFL draft) at month’s end.

It’s only for the opening few games that the Tigers have everyone’s attention, and if they can’t sell themselves during that brief time, nobody will buy into them come summer when they’re customarily 20 or so games below .500.

This day was the best sales pitch imaginable.

The new guys came through. Jason Johnson outperformed Halladay, pitching six innings of shutout ball, scattering four hits. Rondell White rocketed an 0-1 Halladay pitch nearly 400 feet into the left-field stands for a two-out, three-run homer.

The new offense delivered. It took the Tigers only seven innings to do what took the first seven games last season — and that’s scoring the season’s first seven runs.

The young guys stepped up. Carlos Pena drilled a Halladay curveball over the right-field wall for the first run, in the fourth inning. But perhaps more important, Pena made a key defensive play in the bottom of the inning when he dived and snared Eric Munson’s errant throw from third, limiting the Blue Jays’ Vernon Wells to a harmless single.

Last year, that ball likely would have wound up in the stands with the base-runner on third.

“Why do y’all want to keep talking about last year?” Young ranted. “We couldn’t give a rat’s ass about 2003. This is 2004. We’re gonna kick some ass and take some names this year. Y’all can talk until you’re blue in the face about last year, but we’re not dwelling on it. We’re moving forward. We’re not looking back. We’re not going to be the doormat or the laughingstock.”

Well, for one day they weren’t.

“Nobody’s going to be laughing at us tomorrow or the next day, either,” Young said. “It’s pretty simple. The owner didn’t spend any money before. When the owner spends money and lets Dave Dombrowski do what he does best — and that’s being one of the best GMs in the business — you see a change.”