AUBURN | It’s been a tough year on the baseball diamond this season, one of the toughest in program history.

There are a multitude of reasons for Auburn going into the final weekend of the season just 6-21 in the conference but it starts with a pitching staff that is 13th in the SEC with a 5.90 team ERA.

In 27 league games, AU’s staff ranks 14th with a 7.68 ERA.

A lot like the wide receiver room in football, AU’s pitching staff will have to undergo a major overhaul in the offseason. That actually started back in November with AU signing a top five class that included 12 pitchers.

It wasn’t just pitching that plagued this year’s team. Injuries have certainly hurt the lineup and a 3-9 record in one-run games has added to the frustration.

I’m not here to make excuses for the program but one area I think the coaching staff and players deserve credit for is they’ve continued to compete, even under the worst circumstances.

That was evident a week ago when they gave up three runs in the ninth to fall behind 9-8 to Ole Miss only to score two in the bottom of the inning to earn the win.

After blowing a five-run lead in a 12-11 loss at Missouri Friday night, which eliminated them from postseason play, AU bounced back to win the next two and win an SEC series for the first time this season.

The personnel issues are still there but this team has continued to fight and play hard. Here’s how coach Butch Thompson recently summed it up saying that the team and players need to honor the program and themselves over the final couple of weeks.

It’s also a reminder that although coaches will be judged by wins and losses and championships, there’s other very important aspects to their programs.

“This doesn’t have to define your status for your whole life,” said Thompson. “The lessons of going to Omaha or hosting the last two years are lessons for life. I think Gabe gave the guys the “If” poem by Rudyard Kipling — If you can meet triumph and defeat and treat both imposters the same.

“What are we supposed to be doing? We’re supposed to be raising men. You can do that whether this is happening for you (raises hand) or whether you’re rock bottom going through something (lowers hand), there’s still a proper response and a proper way that you handle everything. You probably learn more through something like this to make you a better person the next time. If you don’t quit, you’ll be hard to beat later on.”

Much of the same can be said for the softball team, which lost three of its best players in the transfer portal after last season, started SEC play 2-7 this spring and coach Mickey Dean announced March 26 that he would retire at the end of the season.

The Tigers, however, fought back to go 7-8 over the final five conference series and secure a No. 2 seed in the Florida State Regional where they’ll play UCF Friday afternoon.

There’s no quit in either program.

Of course, Tallahassee has been a tough destination for Auburn’s baseball and softball teams. Baseball has had its season come to an end at FSU seven times in an NCAA Regional or Super Regional and softball three times in three trips.

One of baseball’s only wins came on perhaps the most dramatic swing in program history when David Ross sent the game-winning three-run home run well over the left field wall with two strikes and two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

Auburn had to beat FSU one more time in the 1997 Regional to advance to the College World Series, which they did the following day.

So both teams may have their seasons come to an end this weekend short of expectations. Well short in the case of baseball.

But Thompson, who has taken Auburn to two CWS in nine seasons, has already proven he can bounce back quickly. After going 25-27 overall and 10-20 in the SEC in an injury-plagued 2021 season, AU was back in the CWS the next year.

Softball hasn’t been to the WCWS since 2016 but a new era will dawn in the coming weeks.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 30 years to the release of the signature song from one of the leading grunge bands out of Seattle. On May 13, 1994, Soundgarden released “Black Hole Sun” as the third single from their 1994 album Superunknown. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts but finished the year as the No. 1 song on that chart for the entire year. The song was written by Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, who misheard a news report saying “black hole sun” and composed it in his head on a 40-minute drive home from a recording studio. He whistled the song into a dictaphone when he got home that night and the next morning wrote the lyrics and finished the arrangement. Michael Beinhorn, the producer for the song, had this to say on a podcast in 2017: “I think for the rest of my entire life, until I draw my last breath, I'll never ever forgot how I felt when they started playing that song. From the very first few notes, I felt like I'd been hit by a thunderbolt.” “Black Hole Sun” won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance and it’s ranked No. 368 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Sings of All Time.

Soundgarden was founded in 1984 by Cornell, who also played drums, bassist Hiro Yamamoto and guitarist Kim Thayil. They named themselves after a sculpture named, A Sound Garden, which is located on the property of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. Drummer Matt Cameron joined the band in 1986 with Connell concentrating on vocals. The band signed with a new label, Sub Pop, in 1987 and released their first single and a couple of EP’s. After releasing their first album, Ultramega OK, with a new label in 1989, they signed with a major label, A&M Records and toured with Guns N’ Roses. Their next album, Loudest Love, only made it to No. 108 on the Billboard 200. With Ben Shepherd stepping in as bassist in 1991, Soundgarden released their third studio album, Badmotorfinger, which earned a Grammy nomination and included the singles “Outshined” and “Rusty Cage.” Superunknown was their breakout album and also included the singles “Spoonman,” “Fell On Black Days” and “The Day I Tried to Live.” Soundgarden released one more album before breaking up in 1997 due to personal differences and Cornell wanting to shift the band away from the heavy guitar sound. Cornell released a couple of solo albums and joined the group Audioslave while Cameron joined Pearl Jam and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Pearl Jam in 2017. The band reunited in 2010 and released a sixth album, King Animal, in 2012, but disbanded after the death of Cornell in 2017. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging with his wife, Vicky, claiming that the anti-anxiety drug, Ativan, played a part in his death. Soundgarden, which won two Grammys, sold 30 million albums worldwide.