It’s easy to decode the inspiration behind Casey’s Dugout. The boutique restaurant is a shrine to sports, particularly baseball, and acts as a tribute to owner Casey Keown’s East Side upbringing.
Headlining the decor is retired New York Yankee Don Mattingly. Photos and memorabilia cover the walls, and dozens of his baseball cards are packed under glass table tops. Sport action figures dangle from the ceiling. Some of the more valuable artifacts displayed are Mattingly’s 1985 contract with the Yankees (Keown has refused offers for it), plus bags Mattingly carried on team road trips.
Keown is a lifelong Mattingly fan — both are Reitz Memorial High School grads — and much of the restaurant’s memorabilia collection is his own. When Keown left the landscaping industry in 2024 — he sold his nine-year-old business, Grass Kickers, to Colonial Classics — he pursued his dream of running a pizza place near his old stomping grounds. Inspiration came from spots he frequented, including The Slice, Steve’s Una Pizza, and Turoni’s Forget-Me-Not Inn.
Keown wanted Mattingly to be a focal point of his own establishment. Longtime residents might find Casey’s Dugout reminiscent of Mattingly’s 23, an East Side restaurant that had a nine-year run before closing in 1996.
“We reached out to him early on, wanted to name a pizza after him,” Keown says of Mattingly. “He was on board, and so was Lori [Don’s wife]. He comes in when he’s in town. He eats, and he blends right in. Nobody’s wearing him out for autographs.”
Mattingly’s favorite pizza, The Hitman, is one of Casey’s Dugout’s bigger sellers and is topped with mushrooms, sausage, and extra cheese. Two other specialties are dear to Keown’s heart: His son Graham is the namesake of the “Graham” Slam loaded with sausage, pepperoni, beef, ham, bacon, onion, green pepper, black olives, mushrooms, and pepperoncini. Harper’s Hot Honey Hawaiian, a sweet nod at his daughter, blends ham, pineapple, and brown sugar, with a hot honey drizzle. Actually, there’s a second Mattingly-inspired pie: The Donnie MEATball offers house-made meat- balls, ricotta, green pepper, onion, and mozzarella. Mary’s Little Lamb and the MARGO-Rita are other popular choices.
Fully aware of Evansville’s reputation as a capital of thin-crust pizza, Keown sought his own niche. His crust is a thicker, hand-tossed style, and The Dugout doesn’t skimp on toppings. Every pizza is stacked, and pies like the aforementioned “Graham” Slam weigh a whopping
4-5 pounds. “We pile on the toppings unlike anybody in town,” Keown says. “We have trucks that come twice a week to deliver fresh goods. More times than not, people are eating with a fork.”
The menu doesn’t stop at pizza. Wings and fireball appetizers (baked dough with hot honey sauce, bacon, and jalapeños, if you like) bring serious heat and bookend meals with Tiger Balls, a gooey cinnamon sugar concoction named for Memorial’s mascot. Sandwiches include a hot ham and cheese, stromboli, and the roast beef — get it with au jus — which sold out for 16 straight weeks. A hobbyist poet, Keown shared this ode to The Dugout’s roast beef delicacy on social media:
Five ounces thick, it’s stacked just right, Still steaming warm, still holding tight. Fresh baked bread, no shortcut roll, This sandwich hits you deep down in your soul …
Pizza maker? Poet? Lawncare expert? Keown is a lot of things, and Casey’s Dugout reflects his dynamic energy to a T. On
April 1, he joked on social media about adding rooftop dining. He’s known to wear a pinstripe suit — a la the “Hitman” — or coveralls emblazoned with patches of SKI soda, Grippo’s potato chips, and beer brands. When Hooters suddenly closed its Lincoln Avenue location in June, Keown snagged the wings chain’s owl-and-blaze-orange sign for his shop. Taken individually, it all seems odd. But Keown thrives off the unexpected. “His talent shows in his marketing. He has a charismatic way about him,” says Kyle Fields, a Casey’s Dugout investor and lifelong friend of Keown’s. “It’s been well received; his sales show that. The community has backed him, especially on the East Side.”
It was Fields who brought Lance Armstrong — a client of Fields’ firm, Bridge Alternatives — for dinner at The Dugout during a November visit to Evansville. “I thought it would be cool for Casey and [wife] Bissy … just the memory that created. And I knew the food was going to be good, and (Armstrong) wouldn’t be bothered, ” Fields says, recalling that the retired pro cyclist ordered slices of The Hitman and a pepperoni pie with jalapeño. “Lance has traveled the world and tried a lot of pizza — he’s not going to keep eating it if he doesn’t like it. He had 3-4 slices, so that was our test,” Fields laughs. “Casey was proud.”
Mattingly memorabilia shares the spotlight with the blue Memorial and purple University of Evansville basketball jerseys donned by Keown’s older brother, Clint, who died in an automobile accident in September 2024. Keown says he’s heard people call Casey’s Dugout “a Memorial bar,” but the shop supports all area schools and causes, including, appropriately, Evansville-based Mattingly Charities.
“Everything we do here at Casey’s Dugout is for the kids in the community and the surrounding area,” he says. “(It’s) a place where parents can come and relax, and kids can be kids and create memories with friends and family that we hope will last a lifetime.”
Operating in a former optometrist’s office, Casey’s Dugout packs in customers in a tight, cozy space. As a neighborhood place, “you get as many people walking here as driving here,” Keown says.
The feel is intimate, and while Keown likes it that way, his eyes are on the future. He’s scoped out vacant properties in Evansville and surrounding communities. The Casey’s Dugout home base isn’t going anywhere, but “to be widely successful, you need more than one (location),” Keown says. “Now that we are established,” he says, “people are looking at us.”
