DETROIT – Miguel Tejada, Mark Teixeira, and their American League teammates gave a new-look All-Star game the same old result.

Baltimore’s Tejada homered off Atlanta’s John Smoltz to start the scoring, Texas’s Teixeira added a two-run drive off Florida’s Dontrelle Willis, and the AL over came Kenny Rogers’s bumpy inning to beat the NL 7-5 last night for its eighth straight All-Star win.

The White Sox’ Mark Buehrle got the victory with two scoreless innings for an AL staff that mostly made Comerica Park live up to its reputation as a pitcher’s park in an era of hitter’s havens. The AL had a shutout going into the seventh, when Texas’s Rogers gave up a two-run homer to Atlanta’s Andruw Jones, prompting more boos for the Texas lefty, playing while appealing a 20-game suspension.

The AL made it 3-0 since the change in 2003 that gave the All-Star-winning league homefield advantage in the World Series.

Tejada, Teixeira, and Buehrle were among 13 players getting their first All-Star starts in a game nothing like the famous 1971 classic about two miles away at Tiger Stadium. Eighteen future Hall of Famers played in that one, and six of them homered – including Reggie Jackson, who hit the stunning shot off the light tower on top of the roof.

The most famous player in this one was Houston’s Roger Clemens, a month shy of his 43rd birthday. The Rocket, an All-Star for the 11th time, pitched a perfect fifth inning, retiring Boston’s David Ortiz, the Angels’ Garret Anderson, and Tejada. The seven-time Cy Young Award winner entered and exited thousands of flashing camera bulbs aimed at him by the crowd of 41,617.

The most infamous player was the 40-year-old Rogers, who was booed loudly when introduced and tipped his cap to the crowd as he looked ahead stone-faced. He was penalized by baseball commissioner Bud Selig for an outburst last month that sent a television cameraman to the hospital and prompted a police investigation.

“I wanted to pitch,” Rogers said. “I didn’t pitch last year in the game, and I think at this stage in my career it’s something that’s not expected from me.”

Exactly 50 years to the day after the funeral of Arch Ward, the Chicago Tribune editor who invented the All-Star game, the starters entered the field with Hollywood glitz, coming out from a red carpet set up behind the plate.

Smoltz dropped to 1-2 in All-Star play, tying the record for losses – he lost in ’89 and got the NL’s last victory in ’96.

Francona, who led the Red Sox to their first title since 1918, had an odd turn in the ninth inning: He got to bring in the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera the final out, and he struck out Houston’s Morgan Ensberg for his second All-Star save.

“I heard Johnny Damon say some thing like, ‘Come on Mo,'” Francona said, referring to the Red Sox center fielder. “I looked at him and I said, ‘I bet I never would have heard you say that.’ It was OK. You know what, for one night, it was pretty cool.”

There were five double plays in the game, an All-Star record, including three turned by the AL.

Tejada, who was named MVP after the game, homered off Smoltz leading off the second, a 436-foot drive that landed in the middle of the seats beyond the left-field bullpens – it would have been an easy home run even before the wall was brought in two years ago.

Ortiz’s RBI single to the base of the right-field wall and Tejada’s RBI grounder made it 3-0 in the third against Houston’s Roy Oswalt, and Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-run single off Washington’s Livan Hernandez in the fourth.

Teixeira’s homer in the sixth boosted the lead to 7-0 and was a bit of a shocker. While he leads the AL in home runs with 25, they all were hit off right-handers. The switch-hitter doesn’t have any in 85 at-bats against lefties.

Jones, tied for the major league home run lead with 27, hit his second All-Star homer following one in 2003. Florida’s Miguel Cabrera added a run-scoring grounder off Minnesota’s Joe Nathan in the eighth, and Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez hit an RBI double in the ninth off Baltimore’s B.J. Ryan and scored on a grounder by Milwaukee’s Carlos Lee.