AUBURN, Ala. – Francis Sanda holds an Auburn record that can never be broken.
Highest winning percentage: 1.000%
Auburn's ticket manager in the mid-1960s, Sanda also volunteered to help baseball coach Paul Nix at practice, hitting grounders to infielders and fly balls to outfielders.
This was a different era of SEC baseball than the one to which contemporary fans are accustomed. There were no assistant coaches.
In the spring of 1967, Nix's father passed away and the coach went home to Greenville, Alabama, for the funeral on Tuesday, April 25, the same day Auburn was scheduled to play Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
When Nix came to the Plains in 1963, Sanda, then an Auburn University senior, served as Nix's first student manager.
1963: Paul Nix's (top left) first Auburn team, with student manager Francis Sanda (top right)
"Kept a good relationship with him," said Sanda, who was tasked with filling in for Nix for the rivalry game at the stadium that would one day be named after the man with whom he exchanged lineup cards, Alabama coach, two-time World Series champion and future baseball hall of famer Joe Sewell.
A month earlier, the Tigers had lost 3-0 at home to their rivals, so Sanda felt the pressure to settle the score on Alabama's diamond.
Seeking to keep his pitching staff healthy for the balance of a promising season, Nix gave Sanda two explicit instructions involving Auburn aces Q.V. Lowe and Jim Blauser for this midweek matchup.
"'No. 1: Do not pitch Q.V.,'" Sanda remembered. "'No. 2: You can pitch Blauser, but just let him go four innings at the maximum."
When Auburn's Scotty Long hit an early three-run homer, Sanda concluded that coaching wasn't so difficult after all.
"There ain't nothing to this stuff," he said.
Staked to a 3-0 lead, Sanda decided to let Blauser cruise right on past Nix's four-inning limit.
"Five perfect innings," Sanda said. "I said, 'Jim, I'm going to let you go one more inning.' Sure enough, he's perfect, six innings.'"
Sanda decided not to push his luck.
"I took him out after six," he said. "Next time Scotty comes up, we've got two people on, he hits another three-run homer. 6-0."
In the seventh, Auburn handed the ball to a freshman, who in Sanda's estimation did not receive a fair strike zone from a local umpire Sanda considered to be biased in Alabama's favor.
"All of a sudden, we don't have any strikes," he said.
The home team scored twice in the seventh, then added three more in the eighth off another Auburn underclassman to trim the Tigers' lead to one run.
Sanda, fearful of the backlash he'd face in the Auburn Athletic department if the Tigers squandered a six-run lead on his watch, made a bold decision.
"So I said, 'Q.V., warm up,'" he recalled.
Even with the SEC's ace pitcher, who went 15-1 that season and set an Auburn record with a 1.69 career ERA, on the mound, Sanda thought Auburn was still getting squeezed.
Not even Q.V. could get a strike call, and Alabama scored the tying run in the bottom of the eighth.
Auburn scored in the top of the ninth to take a one-run lead, then Lowe came back out for bottom of the ninth, issuing a leadoff walk, after which Sewell called for a sacrifice bunt to advance the tying run into scoring position with one out.
Visiting the mound, Sanda instructed Lowe to walk the next batter, putting the potential winning run on base but creating a force out at any base for Auburn.
"He hits into a perfect double play to Q.V.," recalled Sanda, reliving the 57-year-old details as if the game occurred last week.
Auburn won 7-6. Nix returned and Sanda retired from coaching, his perfect winning percentage intact.
"I let my record stand at 1-0," Sanda said.
The 1967 Auburn Tigers would go on to make the program's first College World Series appearance, finishing third in Omaha.
Lowe and Sanda have shared stories and laughs ever since.
"That's the only reason you got 15 wins," Sanda reminds the 2020 Alabama Sports Hall of Fame inductee.
Nix had given Sanda two orders. In the heat of a rivalry battle, he disobeyed both. Mindful of the bottom line, i.e. the final score, Nix was not unhappy.
"He didn't say much since we won," Sanda said, chuckling.
For 53 seasons, Francis Sanda (middle, striped shirt) has recorded every free throw, foul and field goal
Sanda's interactions with contest officials took a friendlier turn with his next position at Auburn, official scorer for men's basketball, a job he's held for 53 seasons.
"You get to meet a lot of good people, the referees and the relationship you have with them," said Sanda, who also counts opposing coaches as friends and who, for many seasons, served as official scorer for the SEC tournament. "That was a good assignment."
Sanda first learned how to keep score as the manager of his basketball team at Gadsden High School.
As an Auburn freshman, he served as one of the football team's managers, adding baseball to his responsibilities in the spring in exchange for a scholarship that paid for his tuition, books and laundry during the spring quarter.
"I often wondered how I was going to get through the spring quarter," said Sanda, who continued his baseball managerial responsibilities throughout his time as a student, first under Erk Russell then under Nix, whom he would one day serve as understudy.
Auburn University profiled Sanda last season as part of its "Game Face" series, in which writer Neal Reid detailed Sanda's Auburn journey and succinctly summarized his gameday assignment: As the official scorer, Sanda is tasked with keeping the "book" that serves as the approved and authorized record recognized by the NCAA. He works with the game officials to get the calls, statistics and game events correct in the scorebook, which he tediously and meticulously maintains all season.
What keeps him coming back to Neville Arena, year after year?
"The enjoyment of it," said Sanda, who refers to advice he was given long ago by Kitty Sue Beard, the daughter of former Auburn athletic director Jeff Beard.
"She said, 'Francis, don't ever give it up if you don't want to,'" remembered Sanda, who managed an Opelika surgical clinic for 43 years after leaving Auburn's ticket office in 1970. "'You enjoy it and you're good at it.'"
In more than a half century of sitting courtside for Auburn basketball, Sanda has seen a lot. The Charles Barkley era and Sonny Smith's run of NCAA Tournament teams, Cliff Ellis' 1999 SEC championship team.
"There have been so many great players during the period of time that I was fortunate enough to keep score," he said.
All of which set the stage for the past decade of roundball excellence under Bruce Pearl, whose teams have won SEC regular season championships in 2018 and 2022, and an SEC Tournament title in 2019 on the way to the only Final Four appearance by any program in the history of the state of Alabama.
"Coach Pearl is one of a kind," Sanda said. "It's tremendous to see the arena get filled every night. He brings the people in."
Whether he's charting every 3-pointer, free throw and foul at Neville Arena, or defying the baseball coach's directives but bringing home bragging rights and a one-run victory from Tuscaloosa, one thing is certain.
Francis Sanda knows the score.
Francis Sanda knows the score
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer
