Tennessee brought out mustard bottle home run prop against Ole Miss
Tennessee at Ole Miss set up to be one of SEC baseball’s biggest series of the season as a showdown of highly ranked teams. In fact, it’s a battle of No. 1-ranked teams based on a few of college baseball’s many polls.
Friday night’s series opener was all Tennessee. The Vols hammered the Rebels 12-1, hitting 5 home runs at Swayze Field. According to one Ole Miss pitcher, the Rebels took UT lightly, believing the Volunteers’ home runs were due to playing on a “small field.”
“We took them lightly,” Dylan DeLucia said after the game, per Nick Suss of the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. “It won’t happen again. We will win tomorrow. I’ll tell you that. It’s one of those things where they play in a small field. We have a bigger field, so we thought we could throw it in to them. It didn’t work out. We missed some spots and that’s why they ended up hitting the homers. Tomorrow will be a lot better.”
DeLucia pitched 6.2 innings of relief in Friday’s game. He allowed 5 runs on 3 home runs, striking out 6. Tennessee currently has 64 home runs through 22 games, which leads the nation. The Vols are on pace to potentially break LSU’s record of 188 home runs in a season from 1997. UT played 68 games last year.
A mustard bottle could be seen when Tennessee celebrated a second-inning home run. After UT’s Jared Dickey’s home run, fellow Vols outfielder Kyle Booker brought a mustard bottle from the dugout and tossed it to Dickey, per Mike Wilson of the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Home Run No. 60 on the year.
Yes, we said SIXTY!
📺 https://t.co/QXTiNxHEiq#GBO // #OTH // #BeatOleMiss pic.twitter.com/W4wR1W9FAW
— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) March 26, 2022
The mustard bottle’s appearance followed Lane Kiffin using a golf ball for the ceremonial first pitch. Both items were among the things thrown on the field at Neyland Stadium during last year’s Ole Miss-Tennessee football game.