LOS ANGELES — Cheers can run together when every player is a star, but there were differences Tuesday night when baseball’s All-Star Game returned to Dodger Stadium.

The crowd of 52,518 greeted Dodgers and Angels players like hometown heroes. It welcomed former local heroes back to Southern California. It booed introductions that began, “From the Houston Astros …”

Before the sun had set behind the stands, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw had pitched a scoreless inning, and Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts and shortstop Trea Turner and Angels wonder Shohei Ohtani had base hits.

Kershaw and Ohtani’s much-anticipated game-opening duel somehow produced bright moments for both men.

Ohtani reached out and stroked a Kershaw fastball into center field for a single, but then Kershaw picked Ohtani off first base, catching the runner leaning the wrong way with a throw to first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.

Kershaw said he let the moment soak in before he threw the first pitch of his first All-Star start.

“It was actually a lot of fun today to be out there, and the crowd was awesome,” said Kershaw, 34, an All-Star for the ninth time overall. “I can’t say enough good things about Dodger fans, people in L.A. in general, just how much these last few days, how much they wanted me to do this. It meant a lot to me, too.”

The local accent to the 92nd Major League Baseball All-Star Game continued when New York Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, hit a pitch from the Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin 457 feet into the left-field bleachers for the American League to wipe out an early National League lead. Stanton was named the game’s MVP.

It was Southern California seizing the stage on a day when Dodger Stadium wasn’t only the home of the Dodgers but the home of all of baseball.

The baseball world was represented in the jerseys sported by fans over the three days of the Futures Game prospects showcase, the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game itself. You saw the jerseys of every major-league team going (and some, like the Montreal Expos, gone) and of national teams. You saw a little girl in a Rockford Peaches uniform (from “A League of Their Own”).

In Baltimore Orioles shirts, Jim Mitchell, his brother Joe Mitchell and their friend Bob Plante stood in the loge level before the game taking in the scene before their 29th consecutive All-Star Game, a streak that began at their hometown Camden Yards in 1993 (and was interrupted only by the cancellation of the 2020 game).

“We loved it,” said Jim, 51. “The next year it was in Philly. We’re like, ‘Oh, we can drive up to Philly.’ We drove up there and had another great time. Then we’re like, ‘Oh, we can go to Cleveland’ … We just made it our summer kind of thing.”

Tickets cost “$25 or $50” each in ’93, Jim said. A three-day ticket strip was $1,000 a man in ’22. But Dodger Stadium was worth it.

“I love the classic stadiums, and there aren’t many left,” Jim said. “I love Fenway (Park in Boston, Wrigley (Field in Chicago).”

Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962, now is Major League Baseball’s third-oldest park.

“You come here, and it’s like a retro feel,” Jim Mitchell said. “You can feel the history.”

Lori Geller, 86, and her son Mark Geller, 60, have seen a lot of that history. This was Mark’s second All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium. They attended Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, in which Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run started the Dodgers on a championship upset of the Oakland A’s.

“Getting into the stadium’s a lot different (now),” Mark said. “Parking stinks. Traffic stinks. Forty-two years ago, it didn’t take forever to get out of here. But it’s nice. With the renovations they did on the stadium, it looks good.

“(And) it’s the All-Star Game. You get to see all of the great players. Most of the great players.”

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Lori, dressed in Dodger blue from hat to sneakers, was asked what she hoped to see Tuesday.

“Just darned good baseball,” she said.

Three generations of the Castillejas family came to give two young sons their first look at Major League Baseball All-Stars.

“Once in a lifetime,” said Rich Castillejas, their father.

Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin suffered his first loss of the season for the National League, giving up back-to-back homers to Stanton and Minnesota Twins outfielder Byron Buxton in the fourth inning to account for all of the American League’s scoring in a 3-2 victory, the AL’s ninth consecutive All-Star Game victory.

But not before other L.A. and Orange County stars tried to steal the show, just what much of the crowd came to see.