BUTLER TWP — Talk about a sporting life.

Randy Huey is still living it at age 62.

The Butler resident has a daughter, Makenzie Huey, on the Golden Tornado’s basketball, volleyball and track and field teams. Two other daughters — Ashley and Emily — played volleyball at Butler.

Huey coached Karns City’s boys basketball team to the state finals in 1983. He coached cross country at Seneca Valley for 24 years.

But his biggest claim to fame?

Softball.

Huey played shortstop for the Iron Dukes, a slow-pitch team in New Castle, in 1974-75. He joined the team on the tail end of a dynasty that saw the Iron Dukes win six consecutive state titles from 1970-75.

“You think of slow-pitch softball, you think of beer leagues,” Huey admitted. “But this team was nothing like that.

“We played the game. There was no goofing around.”

The Iron Dukes will become the first slow-pitch team to be inducted into the Pennsylvania Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame at a dinner Saturday in Grantville, near Harrisburg.

Huey will not be there. He had already booked a baseball spring training vacation in Florida.

“I’ll be thinking about those guys,” he said. “That was a special group.”

The Iron Dukes defeated four national championship teams during their stretch of success. They won 29 tournaments, finished second in eight others, and once had a 108-game winning streak in league play.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of turnover in terms of the roster,” team member Tony Guiliano of New Castle said. “We had 24 players total on the team during that six-year run and 11 of them were born and raised within a mile of my house.

“We were a bunch of brothers, cousins, neighbors and friends who loved playing ball together.”

Huey was not among that group. He was one of few players on the team who did not come from New Castle.

Huey was raised in Butler and has always lived here.

“I went to school at Westminster College and met some guys from New Castle there,” he said. “I started playing ball with them my senior year in college.

“I played on teams at Franklin Field in Butler for a number of years, too. After college, I wound up playing for the Croton Dukes in New Castle, with some college buddies.”

Huey said guys did “a lot of jumping around” from team to team and he wound up with the Iron Dukes.

“I was a singles hitter who usually hit around .600 or so,” Huey said. “I made the all-world team at a tournament one year.”

While the Iron Dukes were a neighborhood team from a small town, they repeatedly went to tournaments and defeated teams representing large metropolitan areas such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Louisville, Cincinnati and Rochester (N.Y.).

“We defeated three teams that at some point were ASA national champions,” Guiliano said. “We played against 15 guys who are now members of the ASA Hall of Fame.”

Huey recalled big crowds attending some of their games. He played softball from 1970 through 1981.

“That seemed to be the heyday for the sport,” he said. “The hillside used to be filled with fans when we played.”

Huey got married in 1982, got involved with coaching and gave up softball.

His family learned of his playing career by going through scrapbooks.

“My mother used to put those scrapbooks together and I hated it back then,” Huey said. “But, now, I’m glad she did it.”