What a great opportunity for the Padres, who can earn themselves free craft beer and food in San Diego for the rest of their lives by winning Friday’s playoff game at Dodger Stadium.

A Padres victory in the winner-take-all fifth game of the Division Series would be even bigger than the Jake Cronenworth game.

There’s no margin for error.

Two Octobers ago, the Padres could afford to lose the Division Series-clinching Game 4 remembered most for Cronenworth’s single in the San Diego rain that put the Padres ahead to stay and into their first National League Championship Series since 1998.

Never mind that Cronenworth has followed with two very mortal baseball seasons since he swatted the wet pitch from fellow lefty Alex Vesia, the Dodgers’ reliever who grew up in Alpine.

In San Diego, he’ll always be a baseball god. He’s the humble dude who beat the Dodgers and rewarded a Petco Park crowd seemingly devoid of Dodgers fans. Parents named their child Jake to honor Cronenworth.

Send the Dodgers into another offseason, by defeating them in their own ballpark, with no margin for error and an LCS berth riding on it?

The Padres wouldn’t need transportation back to San Diego. They could float home.

The happiest I saw Tony Gwynn was after the Padres won the 1996 season’s finale to seize the franchise’s first National League West title in 12 years and second overall.

Seeing his brother, Chris Gwynn, drive the game’s biggest hit — the double off a changeup from Chan Ho Park — increased Gwynn’s joy.

But it mattered also to Gwynn that the game was at Dodger Stadium.

Like all Padres players over the years, Gwynn spoke of the Dodgers as the franchise’s first rival, while also acknowledging the Padres hadn’t accomplished nearly enough for the Dodgers to regard them as a worrisome opponent.

Also, Gwynn enjoyed needling Tommy Lasorda.

Winning the 162nd game as they did, however, didn’t ensure the ‘96 Padres a playoff berth. A wild-card  appearance was already theirs, and back then, the NL West title didn’t confer a first-round bye.

So, this is the most important game the Padres have played in Los Angeles. Making a victory potentially more rewarding than the LCS-bound success in 2022, their pitching staff has better depth than two years ago.

This, too: for the first time in 40 years, the Padres will be playing a “winner-take-all” game in any best-of-five or best-of-seven postseason series.

Is this game more important than that Game 5 between the 1984 Padres and Cubs?

No, because a World Series berth isn’t riding on it. The vibes in ‘84 were special.

“Game entertainment” staffs at sporting events were less practiced at whipping up enthusiasm. The fan environment felt less orchestrated and less corporate. Surprise enhanced the euphoria among long-time Padres fans who’d known so much misery.

In the franchise’s 15 seasons before 1984, only one Padres team — in 1978 — had finished with a winning record.

I remember strangers hugging each other after each victory against the Cubs, while I navigated pedestrian traffic as a film runner.

This isn’t the first high-stakes winner-take-all postseason game between a high-profile team from San Diego facing its No. 1 rival..

With a Super Bowl on the line in January 1981, Don Coryell’s Chargers faced the Oakland Raiders as a four-point favorite in the only AFC championship game played in San Diego. The Raiders won, then routed the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

The Padres will need Yu Darvish and relievers to be more accurate than Dan Fouts was on that day. It would not be good for the Padres if Shohei Ohtani and friends prove as powerful as the Raiders’ ground game down the stretch.

A Padres victory would book two games in the East Village to open the NLCS against the Mets, beginning Sunday. In the American League, there isn’t a team that compares to the great Tigers and Yankees teams that faced the Padres in the 1984 and 1998 World Series, respectively.

This game beckons as one of the great opportunities in Padres history — a chance to sustain a postseason run that realistically could bring the franchise’s first World Series trophy and to knock the Dodgers out of the postseason on L.A. soil.