King of the Road: Ike Irish leads No. 7 Auburn

AUBURN, Ala. – The only sound Ike Irish likes more than the one he hears when he barrels a pitched baseball is the one he doesn’t hear immediately afterward when Auburn plays away from home. 

The sound of silence. 

“I just like to hear the crowd go quiet,” Irish said. 

Auburn’s road warrior, Irish quieted crowds across the Southeastern Conference this spring, from Lexington to Athens to Austin to Knoxville to Oxford. 

In 15 SEC road games, he hit .433 with 12 home runs and 21 RBI. 

“I remember Kason Howell telling me my freshman year when you go on the road and you can hear a crowd go silent,” Irish recalled. “My first two years, I really haven’t done that. This year, I came back from an injury, all of the sudden we’re at Kentucky, and it was the first place I really started to get going.”

Auburn’s first two-time First Team All-SEC honoree since associate head coach Gabe Gross a quarter century ago, Irish is a semifinalist for the Dick Howser Trophy and the Golden Spikes Award. 

“It carries over,” he said. “I look forward to playing on the road more than I do playing at home, not that I don’t love playing at home.”

Irish says he learned how to lead from Kason Howell, whose fifth season on the Plains in 2023 was Ike’s freshman year.

“He had a calming sense to him, but he was so confident,” Irish said. “He was confident in our team and in himself, and he performed.”

Auburn coach Butch Thompson credits Irish and fellow upperclassmen Cooper McMurray and Deric Fabian for helping Chris Rembert, Chase Fralick and Bub Terrell earn SEC All-Freshman Team honors. 

“He’s made everybody around him better,” Thompson said. “He’s our SEC Player of the Year. Ike’s been a monster this year and it’s spilled over to him being a leader of this team. Ike’s become a complete player. 

“He can catch. He’s grown as an outfielder. What he stands up and says to the team after some adversity has been a defining moment for us.”

“It’s somebody to tell them how it is, tell them what’s going to happen and then go from there,” Irish said. “We’re a confident group, so you don’t really have to say that much.”

In the transfer portal and NIL era, a player with Irish’s credentials could have commanded a big name, image and likeness payday on the open market. Ike remained loyal to Auburn. 

“The coaching staff and Butch brought me back,” he said. “Knowing he’s one of the best people in the SEC and one of the best coaches, too.

“I signed a letter of intent to go to Auburn. I didn’t sign a letter of intent that said I’m going to hit free agency after my sophomore year. They were loyal to me through the high school process, they didn’t recruit above me, below me. They didn’t bring in transfer guys above or below me. They were loyal to me. I owed them to believe in them as much as they believed in me.”

That loyalty paid off for Irish and for Auburn this season, with Ike batting .398 in SEC games with 13 home runs, the most by a Tiger in conference play since Josh Etheredge also hit 13 in 1997.  He’s driven in at least 50 runs in three consecutive seasons, joining Etheredge, Gross, Frank Thomas, Casey Dunn and Todd Faulkner in that exclusive Auburn fraternity.  

Irish also excels academically, earning a degree in business administration from Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business in three years, an accomplishment Ike attributes to his mother, Kelly, for facilitating by steering him toward AP courses and dual enrollment in high school. 

“I came in with 35 credits,” he said. “All that’s my mom. I think I have eight different community college transcripts. It was her master plan all along and it was fun to see it work out.”

After the season, Irish will turn his attention to the 2025 MLB Draft in Atlanta on July 13-14. But first, he’s hoping to go out with a bang. 

“For me, it’s all about playing it one pitch at a time,” Irish said. “We still have games to play here. I just want to win. I want to take us back to Omaha.”

Reflecting on what his three years on the Plains means to him, Irish pauses, and for a moment it gets quiet, just like when he hits one that clears the fence at an SEC road venue.

“The whole world,” he said. “This coaching staff, this campus, the university. It’s hard to describe, but it’s heaven on earth.” 

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer