31 strikeouts in 14 innings: Petersburg PORTA pitcher made history 50 years ago

One of the greatest baseball games in central Illinois history was played 50 years ago Tuesday.

Casey Duncheon, a senior two-sport athlete, struck out a then-state record 31 Chatham Glenwood batters and pitched a complete game as Petersburg PORTA won 4-3 in 14 innings.

His counterpart that day, Glenwood’s Greg Sapp, went 13 1/3 innings and struck out 14.

“You think you can go all day when you're when you're in a game like that,” Duncheon, 68, said last week.

Pitching duel

There was no scoring for the first 12 innings. As it passed beyond even normal extra-inning game length, PORTA coach Steve Sherwood, now 75, said he kept going to Duncheon to see if he was OK for another inning.

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“I asked Casey at the end of nine how his arm felt and he said, ‘I’m good coach; not a problem,’” Sherwood recalled. “At the end of the 10th inning … I asked him how his arm felt because you’ve thrown quite a few pitches and he said, ‘I’m good for at least two more (innings).’

“(Before the 14th, Duncheon) says, ‘I'm still pretty good. I'll give you a nod if I think I need to come out.’”

Then-Glenwood coach Bill Scheffler probably was hoping for a pitching change.

“Both pitchers were dominant,” Scheffler said. “There weren't a lot of hard outs to be honest with you. We didn't hit the ball very well that day. And they certainly didn't either off Greg. It's one of those weird games that you see every once in a while.

“We were overmatched, to be honest, by him. We were totally dominated.”

It wasn’t only taxing on the pitchers, either. The catchers too caught a lot of pitches and threw back to the pitcher almost as often as the pitchers threw home.

“(PORTA catcher Andy) Winkelmann said, after about the 10th inning, he was trying to find something to put in his gloves so his hand wouldn’t hurt so bad,” Sherwood said. “And he said his arm, throwing the ball back to Casey, was getting tired too.”

Winkelmann said he had something — probably a golf glove — but it wasn’t quite enough.

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“The palm was sore just because I had so many pounds (from the baseball) hitting that spot,” Winkelmann said.

Offense finally comes

In the top of the 13th, Glenwood scored three unanswered runs to take a 3-0 lead. PORTA struck back in the bottom of the 13th and Duncheon had a two-run hit to tie the game and send it to extras.

The Bluejays won the game in the bottom of the 14th when Winkelmann had the go-ahead RBI through the legs of Glenwood relief pitcher Randy Brown to score Steve Selcke.

Duncheon needed just nine pitches to get out of the 14th inning, Sherwood said, which included two strikeouts.

“It was just a great time and that was that was fun,” Duncheon said.

Duncheon set a single-game strikeout record for a game which stood until 1983 when Braidwood Reed-Custer’s Brian Dubois had 32 strikeouts in 16 innings against Yorkville.

The record was broken again in 2004 when Joe Labek fanned 40 in a 21-inning suspended game, started on May 18 and finished on May 25. Labek pitched all 21 innings.

Scheffler pointed out that Duncheon’s performance was actually aided by Sapp.

“If Greg hadn't pitched as well as he did, it would have been a real quick game — you wouldn't get 31 strikeouts,” Scheffler said. “He would have mowed us down pretty good in seven.”

The 14 innings pitched is tied for the 15th-longest outing in Illinois high school history. Sapp’s 13 1/3 innings is 20th.

Sapp died in 2017 at 61 years old.

Stud athlete

Pat Moomey, who coached the Glenwood baseball team from 1986 until 2020 and won two state championships with the Titans, was a freshman in 1972. Moomey, who hit third in the lineup, was 0-for-6 but he took solace in one number.

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“I only struck out three times by the way,” Moomey said with a laugh. “I remember he was pretty good.”

Moomey had already been awed by Duncheon during the basketball season. Duncheon was a two-sport star and played both basketball and baseball at Quincy College — now Quincy University.

“He was kind of the stud athlete in the area,” Moomey said. “He was a great basketball player, too. You know, I remember watching him down at Carlinville and he made shots from everywhere. He was just a dominant athlete.

“We couldn't touch him (on May 3, 1972). We were using wooden bats in those days too but when you're striking out 31 times, it doesn't matter what kind of bat you got your hands.”

Duncheon’s athletic feats are mostly limited to the golf course these days. But Sherwood said Duncheon has never lost his competitive fire.

“To this day, he’s still very, very humble,” Sherwood said. “He’s honored to get any awards but he's not the kind of man that goes out and blows his own horn; that’s just not his personality. He is extremely competitive; he likes to win and doesn’t care if it's on the golf course or baseball or basketball or bowling.”

Duncheon said he played first base the day after his 31-strikeout performance for the first time in his career — before or since. And it took him a while to understand the enormity of his feat.

“Well, I'll be honest with you, I didn't really think much about it until I got older,” Duncheon said. “And then I kind of realized how probably special it was.”

Looking back

After 50 years, some memories fade, become blurry or get embellished. Sherwood dug out the scorebook from an old storage shed to jog some memories for this story.

Some recollections are remembered differently by the participants. Duncheon remembers at some point abandoning his curveball and sticking with his fastball. His catcher, Winkelmann, thought it was the other way around.

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But what Winkelmann knows for sure is he always looked forward to catching for Duncheon.

“It was just a pleasure and an honor to catch Casey Duncheon any time,” Winkelmann said. Winkelmann and Duncheon grew up together in Oakford. Winkelmann graduated in 1973.

Duncheon’s effort won’t be replicated again. The Illinois High School Association has pitch count maximums. No pitcher can begin a new at-bat if he has thrown 105 or more pitches (in the postseason, the pitch count increases to 115).

That’s not a bad rule, says Duncheon.

“There was no pitch limit or nothing,” he said. “Now they do have a pitch limit, which is probably a good thing.”

Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: IHSA baseball: Remembering PORTA pitcher's 31 strikeouts in 14 innings