DETROIT — The stars were out in Atlanta on Tuesday night.

But the spotlight was on Detroit as Major League Baseball celebrated its 95th All-Star Game at Truist Park.

And while the results on the field were far from a smash hit, the Tigers’ present — and presence — was unmistakable from start to finish Tuesday, especially as MLB returned to a decades-old tradition with players wearing their teams’ own home and road jerseys in the league’s midseason showcase event.

That meant the Olde English D stepped into the box right away — on the batting helmets, at least — as the Tigers’ Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene led things off in the first inning wearing their road grays, marking the first time in nearly 60 years that two Detroit hitters batted first and second in an All-Star Game. (Dick McAuliffe and Al Kaline were the last duo in 1966.)

It was an inauspicious start, as both Tigers struck out facing Pittsburgh’s fireballing phenom, Paul Skenes. A sign of things to come as well, with Tarik Skubal soon taking the mound as the starting pitcher for the American League, mic’d up for the Fox TV national broadcast along with Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh.

First-inning trouble ensued as Skubal allowed three consecutive hits — weak-contact singles from Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuna Jr., followed by a two-run double from Ketel Marte that drew an audible expletive from the Tigers' ace — and the AL fell behind, 2-0. Yet after retiring the next three batters, capped by a 100-mph fastball that Skubal blew past the Dodgers’ Will Smith, he headed to the dugout telling the broadcast crew, “We’re all right. We’re all right.”

They were, indeed. The AL rallied from a 6-0 deficit in the late innings and tied it at 6-all in the ninth, sending the game to a Home Run Derby tiebreaker, won by the NL, 4-3. But Skubal and the Tigers are all right, too, and Tuesday’s All-Star turn was just the latest example for a team that has reawakened a slumbering baseball town.

At 59-38 overall, the Tigers own the best record in the majors, the largest division lead (11 1/2 games over Minnesota in the AL Central), and a 99.1% chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs. Dating back to last year’s All-Star break — a 162-game stretch that equates to a full season — Detroit’s record (98-64) is second only to the Los Angeles Dodgers (100-62), the defending World Series champs.

And the 59 wins at the All-Star break ties a franchise record set in 2006. So it’s only fitting that the Tigers had a league-high six All-Stars on the AL roster in Atlanta, tying another club record.

That included four starters in Skubal, Torres, Greene and Javier Báez, as well as a pair of injury-replacement reserves in Zach McKinstry and Casey Mize. (It even included a seventh Tiger in bat boy Frankie Boyd, who was selected through fan voting for the MLB All-Star Ball Crew.)

'Great for our city'

Each player had their own unique story to tell about getting to this point, from Skubal and his Cy Young dominance to McKinstry and his utility excellence to Báez and his remarkable redemption. And the Tigers understandably reveled in both the individual honors and the bulk implications in the days leading up to the All-Star break. So what if the Tigers went hitless in eight plate appearances Tuesday night, or that Mize gave up a solo homer to Arizona's Corbin Carroll in his sixth-inning stint after Skubal stumbled out of the gate.

“We should always respect being rewarded with this type of volume of players,” manager AJ Hinch said. “It's great for our city, it's great for our organization, it's great for the players. And we should take time over the break to smile, enjoy and soak it all in when we see ‘em on that stage.”

The first time the Tigers had this many All-Stars was in 1984, the same year the team came roaring out of the gates with a 35-5 record and went on to win the World Series.

Of course, All-Star representation doesn’t guarantee a ring. Detroit sent six again in 1985 and missed the playoffs entirely, while the star-studded 2013 Tigers flamed out in the ALCS against Boston.

Midseason records often don’t equate to October success, either. Philadelphia had the best record in baseball at the All-Star break last summer — and a whopping eight players on the NL All-Star roster — yet the Phillies lost to a wild-card team (the New York Mets) in the divisional round in the postseason. The same thing happened to Atlanta in 2023. Ditto San Francisco in 2021 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2019. In fact, you have to go all the way back to 2018 to find a World Series champ (Boston) that also sat atop the MLB standings in mid-July.

But while the focus over the next two weeks will be on team president Scott Harris and what moves he’ll make ahead of the July 31 trade deadline — help for a beleaguered bullpen tops the wish list — the players’ focus is on maintaining the team chemistry they all credit for much of their success.

“I think it’s just having fun for us,” said Greene, the 24-year-old outfielder who was making his second straight All-Star appearance. “We’re a young team, and you know the saying: Young and dumb. I just feel like we’re going out there, trying to win baseball games and having fun with it.”

Home cooking

Not surprisingly, so are the fans that are filling Comerica Park to near-capacity on a regular basis this summer.

“I feel like every Friday and Saturday night, it’s a sellout,” Greene said. “You can’t even hear yourself think when someone hits the ball in the gap or hits a homer.”

The Tigers’ attendance has spiked along with the win totals, up more than 33% this season. Only the New York Mets have seen a bigger year-over-year jump in per-game attendance than the Tigers.

“Yeah, it’s been great,” Mize told reporters in Atlanta. “When I first got here, obviously, we weren’t a great team. But a lot of people around the league were, like, ‘Wait. Keep going, and you’ll see.’ And so now to be able to see that is so special. Because we’re providing a team that Detroit is proud of, and they’ve been showing out for us. … I care about the city so much, and we’re glad we’re making ‘em proud now.”

As magical as last summer’s unexpected playoff push felt, it was merely the start of something bigger, it turns out. And as Hinch himself noted before the break, if these Tigers can finish the way they started, “this can be a really special summer in Detroit.”

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