Fans and media tend to overreact to ballplayers ranting at each other, or batters getting hit by pitches.

The Padres-Dodgers fireworks Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, however, warranted more than a cursory reaction. The potential fallout could’ve done great harm to the baseball industry.

Credit goes — with one large disclaimer attached — to Padres manager Mike Shildt for how he vented his team’s anger after Fernando Tatis Jr. was hit yet again with a Dodgers pitch late in the 5-3 victory.

Take this from someone who covered 16 Padres teams as a beat reporter: Shildt’s firm three-step response bolstered the competitive spirit of his beaten-up club.

The Dodgers lit the fuse.

Late in the game, they plunked Tatis for the fifth time in his past 17 contests against them. Four of those pitches were fastballs.

How far would Shildt go in response?

After the Dodgers continued to treat his most talented player like a piñata — a trend that wasn’t offset by the likelihood that L.A.’s pitcher, Jack Little, making his MLB debut, simply misfired his tailing fastball — Shildt pushed back three times.

As he stormed the field to check on Tatis, whose right hand was hit by the letters-high, 93-mph fastball, Shildt took verbal aim at the Dodgers, spitting fire toward their dugout.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, taking exception, charged onto the field and buzzed toward Shildt as he jawed with the umpire.

Roberts, 53, shoved Shildt, 56, with a forearm to the chest.

This was a public test. And Shildt aced it.

Making sure everyone saw he wasn’t taking any guff from Roberts, Shildt surged at the Dodgers manager, hollering and pointing. Both managers, now surrounded by coaches and players, were soon pulled away from each other. An appreciative Manny Machado said he noticed how Shildt held his ground. Both managers received one-game suspensions and unspecified fines from Major League Baseball.

Pertinent history: Roberts punked Padres manager Andy Green in 2017 after a Dodgers pitcher accosted a Padres baserunner for allegedly alerting hitters to pitch signs. Roberts shouted an obscenity at Green and pushed him hard, causing Green to stagger backward. Green failed to confront Roberts by getting in his face. Thus, he lost the on-field optics that matter in today’s ultra-visual world, although he talked afterward of payback.

In 2013, following an incident in which Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke plunked Carlos Quentin, who then charged Greinke, breaking his collarbone, key Padres players expressed private disappointment that manager Bud Black wasn’t as nearly as outspoken as Dodgers manager Don Mattingly was in postgame comments.

Back to Thursday night.

After Roberts and Shildt were ejected, it would be up to Shildt whether the hostilities would end there.

Would it be appropriate to plunk Shohei Ohtani, the most talented of Dodgers stars and a player the Padres had already hit earlier in the series with a pitch Roberts described as intentional?

The potential consequences were immense.

If the pitch by veteran closer Robert Suarez injured Ohtani, the Padres would become villains in the United States and Japan, having taken out the world’s most popular baseball player with a retaliatory plunking.

Suarez hit Ohtani with a 3-0 fastball. It was clocked at 100 mph.

Suarez said Friday that he didn’t mean to hit Ohtani. But what if the plunking wasn’t an accident? Were the Padres right to call for retaliation?

Yes, but I don’t feel a strong conviction that it was right.

Here, following, is the mandatory disclaimer — and it belongs in neon-bright ink: Suarez erred by not hitting Ohtani in the thigh or the rear end, as pitchers have done for decades.

The fastball was far too close to Ohtani’s head.

The 6-foot-4 left-handed slugger turned away, and the pitch hit him in the back of the shoulder and his upper arm, which is his pitching arm.

Shaking off the triple-digit plunking, which may have struck his right-elbow guard, Ohtani waved off Dodgers players and staff while trotting to first base.

Whew.

Tatis was spared an injury, too, allowing him to return to the starting lineup Friday after additional tests earlier in the day revealed no fractures in his hand.

Whew.

Overshadowed by Thursday night’s fireworks, which involved two stars whose current multi-year contracts have a combined value of more than a billion dollars, were encouraging developments for the Padres.

Padres starter Ryan Bergert allowed no runs in 4 2/3 innings Thursday, one night after Stephen Kolek held L.A.’s MLB-best lineup to three runs in 6 1/3 innings.

Both right-handers mixed their pitches well with good command. They appeared poised.

If nothing else, the plunking of Tatis gave the Padres a needed energy boost. The team “felt flat” for most of the four-game series in Los Angeles, said a veteran scout. Jackson Merrill’s absence seemed to have a big impact on the team’s energy, the scout suggested.

And the Padres, with several key players in their 30s, are in win-now mode.

It would be a large missed opportunity for this team — whose payroll stands well above the first luxury tax threshold — to allow a rugged patch in June to linger and harm its ability to earn a fourth wild-card playoff berth in six years.

Ballplayers are competitors first, entertainers second. Amid brutal stretches in a season, sometimes it’s best to lean into that trait.

We’re fed up. No más.