While the Auburn baseball program has seen four different coaches and hundreds of different players over the last 15 years, one group of fans have been watching the Tigers take the field in the exact same spot the entire time.

Despite major changes to what is now called the K Korner, Floyd Vest and Leigh Allbrook can still remember when they used to gather behind the right field wall at Samford Stadium at Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park on scaffolding, trucks and RVs with close to 50 of their friends.

The year was 1997.

Auburn was led by head coach Hal Baird to the College World Series. Current Braves’ catcher David Ross and pitcher Tim Hudson were both Tigers. Hudson was also named the best player in the country.

During the season, that group of baseball followers decided to do something that was rare at the time. With Hudson striking out as many opponents as he was, they wanted to represent each strikeout adequately.

“It was just something that we did,” Allbrook said. “We were sitting here thinking, ‘We need some K’s. We need to count his K’s.’”

And thus, the K Korner was unofficially born.

In baseball, when keeping score, a K represents a swinging strikeout and a backwards K represents a non-swinging strikeout. The activity of putting up a K per strikeout is now a common trend at ballparks.

Originally, the K’s were small and black on a white magnet that stuck to the inside of the outfield wall. Over the next few years, the magnets got bigger and eventually became orange and blue.

However, after a year or so, the unofficial K Korner was faced with its first conflict.

In 1998, Plainsman Park was being reconstructed and then-athletic director David Housel informed the group there was a water line under where they had been parking to watch games.

“He said, ‘If we build something for you, would y’all buy the tickets out here?’”

And with that, Auburn built the unofficial K Korner a deck that included an upper and lower bench with a rail in front of it. It was then officially named the K Korner by the athletic department.

“It was a case of ‘If you come, they will build it.’ So they built it,” Vest said, adding a twist to a famous line from “Field of Dreams.”

Despite not actually being inside the stadium until the 2003 renovations, the crazy stories of the K Korner began compiling.

Prior 2003, the visitor’s bullpen was down the right field line, and opposing pitchers warming up were next to the K Korner. Members would harass pitchers as they warmed up and, if players were lucky, sometimes even feed them.

“What coach was it that told us his pitcher had to go to counseling? Or was that a right fielder,” Allbrook asked jokingly to another member.

However, there have been opposing players over the years that couldn’t contain themselves when dealing with the K Korner. A former North Carolina pitcher was one of the examples, as he mooned the right field fans.

“We were getting on him a little bit much, and apparently he decided to drop trou and show it to us,” Vest said.

Despite the 2003 expansion moving the visitor’s bullpen to the other side of the K Korner where pitchers are now safe, Vest and Allbrook still have crazy stories of things that have happened since.

Stadium officials have had to tell members numerous times to stay off the foul pole. Once, during one of the annual crawfish boils, live crawfish in coolers escaped, went under the outfield wall and onto the field’s warning track.

“The (opposing) right fielder took a couple of them back to the dugout,” Allbrook said.

In 2007, a green padding was added to the metal outfield wall for the safety of players. It also created a problem for hanging magnetic K’s.

“(The Athletic Department) didn’t even think about it,” Allbrook said. “They said they came out here one day and said, ‘Oh, no.’”

The crisis was averted with the newest addition to the K Korner: two wooden poles with a wire separating them. With this, the new, non-magnetic K’s had holes punched in each corner. With the help of clips, the K’s now hang from the wires to inform viewers how many strikeouts there are in the game.

The K Korner currently has a capacity of 75 seats, which is consistently filled with fans no matter how ugly the weather gets. Most of them have lived in Auburn for decades, if not their entire lives, Vest and Allbrook included.

In recent years, it has been rumored the exclusive seating may receive an expansion, after being made smaller by close to 10 seats in 2003. While the specifics aren’t known by members, Vest and Allbrook said they have a good idea of what’s to come.

“We’ve heard they’re putting a hot tub up here. And they’re putting grills up here. They’re putting a bathroom up here,” Allbrook joked.

Vest picked up where Allbrook left off.

“They’re going to put a top over us with air conditioning,” Vest said. “We’re getting a couple of flat-screen TVs.”

The actual expansion ideas have varied from adding batting cages near the K Korner, possibly underneath to making the deck itself bigger, so the grills can fit. There’s also been a rumor that seats will be added above “the Green Monster,” the 30-foot wall in left field.

With the K Korner gaining a personality of its own throughout the last decade to not only Auburn fans but also to opposing players, Vest and Allbrook have been along for the ride the entire time, enjoying every minute of it. “We’ve gotten some right fielders in trouble with their coaches because they’ve talked to us too much,” Allbrook said.

The possibility of adding new faces to the K Korner is one that will give fans a new, more exciting insight to baseball that Vest and Allbrook have partaken in for years. “Most coaches like stuff like (the K Korner) to be added to a baseball game … because sometimes they get kind of boring,” Allbrook said.