DETROIT -- For a few seconds, fans at Comerica Park thought they were watching Miguel Cabrera hit a go-ahead grand slam for his 498th career home run.

So did teammates.

• Box score

“I was sure he got it. That’s why I raised my hands,” said Jonathan Schoop, who was standing on second base. “It’s just tough here. You’ve got to really hit it good.”

So did Cabrera, who raised his hands and looked to the heavens as Cedric Mullins tracked down the ball in front of the center-field fence.

“He wanted to win the game,” manager A.J. Hinch said, “and he thought he’d done something to give us a chance.”

The Tigers and Cabrera fell just short Friday in a 4-3 loss to the Orioles, but they provided plenty of drama. Cabrera’s 422-foot sacrifice fly followed a 399-foot double earlier in a two-hit game. While his home run total remained at 497, his hit count jumped to 2,941. The reactions of the 18,861 in attendance as the numbers flipped on the counter in left field made it clear that Miggy’s chase for history is the center of attention as the Tigers head towards the final two months of the season.

“It's kinda awesome, you know what I mean,” Cabrera said before the game. “I come from Maracay, in a little neighborhood. I never think it's going to happen to me. It's really special. I have to say thank you to the team, thank you to the city for giving me this opportunity to be here. It's exciting.”

Cabrera received a loud ovation every time he stepped to the plate after his two-homer game Thursday spurred a bump in ticket sales. He had two of Detroit’s six hits Friday off O’s starter Matt Harvey, whose 6 1/3 scoreless innings played a big role in ending the Tigers’ 10-game home winning streak. Three solo homers off Tigers rookie starter Tarik Skubal built the bulk of Baltimore’s 4-0 lead.

Detroit rallied in the eighth with just two hits, starting with a Derek Hill gapper to left-center that he legged into a leadoff triple. He scored on a wild pitch before Akil Baddoo outran reliever Tanner Scott to first base for an infield single. After Scott hit Schoop and walked Robbie Grossman, Cabrera stepped up as the potential go-ahead run. The crowd was buzzing throughout Dillon Tate’s warmup pitches as Cabrera stood on deck.

Cabrera has done much of his damage recently with opposite-field swings, sending fastballs to right field with some of the authority of his prime. His eighth-inning drive, however, was centered.

It’s a tough area of the park to homer, despite Pedro Severino’s 442-foot drive in the third to the second row of shrubs. Anywhere left or right of the 420-foot sign in straightaway center gets to some serious depths. This one went to the right, a graveyard for many Cabrera drives over the years.

“I never think a ball to center field’s going,” Hinch said with a sigh. “It’s really far out there. The ball was carrying. He hit it well. I just wanted it to get over [Mullins’] head. If it would’ve gone out, it would’ve been great.”

The 422-foot drive was one foot shy of Cabrera’s longest out in the Statcast era, since 2015. His 423-foot drive sent then-Cleveland center fielder Austin Jackson to the same area for a catch on Sept. 1, 2017. Statcast also had it one foot shy of the longest sacrifice fly in the Majors at that time; Anthony Rizzo had a 423-foot sac fly at Comerica Park on Aug. 26 of last season.

“Miggy’s played in this ballpark a long time,” Hinch said. “There’s no blaming the ballpark. The dimensions have been this way for a long time. I think he was frustrated that we could have had a turn of events on a game that quite honestly we didn’t have control of at any point.”

The frustration over his long out didn’t last long. After Baddoo scored, another run-scoring wild pitch scored Schoop and moved the potential tying run to third. Zack Short worked a full count before hitting a 99-mph line drive to short to end the threat.

It was an anticlimactic ending to a game that demonstrated the suspense Cabrera’s chase has created. He’ll get the milestones, just a matter of when and whether he does it at home or on the road. He hopes the fan support continues.

“Not only for me, for the team, for the young guys,” he said. “We've got a lot of really young guys coming up like [Casey] Mize, like Skubal, like Hill, like Baddoo. If they can put it together, these guys are going to be around this city for a long time. These guys are going to be special. Start to follow these guys, start supporting these guys, because these guys are going to be really good.”