AUBURN - Opening night was a bit later than normal, but for 1,821 fans at Falcon Park on Thursday, it was worth the wait.

“This was a great home opener, seems how we've been gone a week,” Doubledays manager Dennis Holmberg said.

Poor weather induced a postponement of the Auburn Doubledays' scheduled opener with Batavia Friday, so fans waited five extra days to see the 2009 team, but it was a member of the 2008 Doubledays team that made the delay worthwhile.

Joel Carreno pitched lights out for Auburn, going seven innings, giving up just two hits and one run in the team's 4-1 win over State College. Carreno had a perfect game going for 6 1-3 innings, until he hit Kyle Gilligan with a pitch. After six strikeouts, Carreno (1-0) finally relented two hits in the seventh, and Kyle Morgan scored on two consecutive throwing errors by the Doubledays' defense - the only two errors in the game for Auburn.

“Certainly Joel set the tone for the evening tonight,” Holmberg said. “He threw no-hit ball for awhile there and maybe he expected too much, but it was a great performance by him. He was pitching within his pitch count on a nice, crisp, cool night. After the hit, any time you throw a perfect game like that, a lot of the adrenaline is gone. All of a sudden, you give up a hit or you walk a guy, sometimes you get a little off track, but I think he did a really great job.”

Defensively, several impressive plays for Auburn wiped away the memory of the errors when Randy Schwartz made a terrific out-of-bounds catch in the fifth, followed by a diving play by Jon Fernandez at second base just two batters later.

Zach Anderson got two outs in the eighth inning, allowing the final Spikes hit, before Casey Beck relieved him and earned his second save of the season.

Offensively, the Maroons climbed back to .500 on the season with the help of seven hits from seven different players.

“You mix your walks around your hits and we had a few more chances to score a few more runs, but we should have come out of that first inning with more than just one run,” Holmberg said. “It seemed like a lot of activity for just one run, but tonight with Carreno on the mound, certainly four runs was enough. We played good enough offensively and defensively to win the game.”

Three scattered errors by the Spikes aided the Doubledays' cause, but center fielder Eric Eiland's RBI double in the second seemed to spark the offense. Welinton Ramirez brought in the first run in the first frame, while Kevin Nolan scored the third run on an error in the second. A wild pitch and error saw Jack Murphy come home in the fifth to round out the Doubledays scoring.

Quinton Miller suffered his first loss of the season after putting forth just three innings of work, allowing five hits, three runs and walking three batters.

Auburn (3-3) hosts State College for the second game in the series today.

NOTES: Fernandez scored two of the early runs for Auburn. ... The Doubledays led the New York-Penn League with nine stolen bases heading into Thursday night's game, but didn't have any against the Spikes. Eiland is the league's individual leader in with four. ... Auburn left seven runners stranded, compared to four for the Spikes.