Summary: While the Detroit Tigers hold the record as the oldest continuous one-name, one-city franchise in the American League, they were not the first team to play major league baseball in the Motor City. That distinction goes to the Detroit Wolverines of the late 19th-century National League, which took to the field for the first time against the Buffalo Bisons on May 2, 1881 in front of a curious crowd of 1,286 at Recreation Park – land now occupied by today’s Detroit Medical Center in the city’s Midtown.
