Auburn's Anfernee Grier is fast of out of the batter's box on his home run on opening day. (Auburn Photo)
By Charles Goldberg
AuburnTigers.com
AUBURN, Ala. -- Butch Thompson took a moment or two for himself before his first game as a Division I head coach.
"I walked to center field 30 minutes before the game and peered back in, because I'm human, and had a rush -- I'm the head baseball coach at Auburn. This is my big leagues. This is an opportunity of a lifetime. It was really neat to see the opening day banners, everybody show up and what a beautiful day."
A beautiful day for an Auburn win, too. The Tigers beat Sacramento State 10-5 in Thompson's first game as Auburn's head coach, though the Tigers' box score was uneven. Auburn had 14 hits to go along with its 10 runs, but also committed an unsightly seven errors.
"Sometimes you play great and win. Today we didn't play great, and won," Thompson said.
Niko Buentello had Auburn's first big hit, a bases-clearing double for a 3-1 lead in the third. Anfernee Grier hit a 2-run homer in the fourth for a 5-2 advantage. Jordan Ebert had three hits and had an RBI.
"It kind of got me back where I was two years ago," Ebert said.
Auburn also had RBIs from Joshua Palacios, Melvin Gray, Daniel Robert and Cody Nulph. Starter Cole Lipscomb won his first opening day start, allowing one earned run five innings. Ben Braymer and Casey Mize finished up. Sam Long was the loser.
The Tigers will be looking for more of the same when they meet Sacramento State again at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Auburn remembered its baseball past from the start, having Hal Baird, the school's most successful baseball coach, throw out the first pitch.
"That was everything, and what he means to Auburn baseball," Thompson said. "I'm pretty sure a lot of people showed up to show a reverence to him. I can't think of anybody more deserving to throw out the first pitch than Hal Baird."
Baird passed the torch to Thompson, who entered his 24th year of college coaching which included a two-year stint as an assistant at Auburn. And then the game began, and really took off for Auburn when Buentello hit his double for a 3-1 lead.
"Clearing those bases was huge," Thompson said.
The Tigers kept adding on, kept making errors and won in front of a good opening-day crowd of 3,665 fans.
"We put up 14 hits? Dang. We had a pretty good day," Grier said.
Thompson said he was happy to see them.
"We needed every bit of it for the way we played defense. The defense is not something we've seen. The defense had been pretty steady," Thompson said.
Charles Goldberg is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @AUGoldMine