Dennis was born in Fort Scott and was a standout athlete at Uniontown High School.

“We didn’t have a baseball team at the time,” he said. “I played Legion ball at Fort Scott in the summer,” Dennis said.

While pitching for the American Legion team in Fort Scott, the team won 28 games over three years and struck out 418 hitters in 222 innings, according to the website, http://ksbaseballhof.com.

“He was all-state in both football and basketball.  He once scored 52 points and had 17 rebounds in a single game and set a 1A state record by scoring 90 points in the 1990 1A tournament, including 33 points in the championship game,” according to info on the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame website.

He graduated from U.H.S. in 1990 and became a midweek starter on the Wichita State University baseball team, posting a 5-1 record with a 2.66 earned run average as a freshman for a Shocker team that went to the College World Series final.

As a college sophomore, he won 13 games, struggled as a junior but bounced back to go 9-2 as a senior with a 1.35 ERA, according to the website.

“He was named Missouri Valley Conference Pitcher of the Year and first-team All-American by the American Baseball Coaches Association and by Collegiate Baseball.  Dennis’s career marks for ERA, starts, strikeouts and innings pitched are ranked in the WSU top ten,” according to the website.

Dennis was then drafted in the seventh round by the San Diego Padres program and pitched four seasons in the organization, winning minor league pitcher of the year in 1996.

“In 1997, Dennis pitched the first of two seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japan Pacific League.  He returned to the Padres organization to play his final season for Triple-A Las Vegas in 1999.

“While at Wichita State, Dennis majored in radio/television journalism and served as color commentator on Shocker women’s basketball broadcasts.  In 2001, he returned to Wichita as play-by-play voice for the Double-A Wichita Wranglers before going back to Wichita State as director of baseball operations for 12 years,” according to the website.

Dennis is now part of the WSU baseball broadcast team and hosts a daily sports show, The Shane Dennis Show, on  ESPN Wichita 92.3 radio station.

“I’ve been at ESPN Wichita the last three years, doing Wichita State Baseball and Basketball games,” he said.

Dennis’s father, Don, pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox and was inducted into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003, according to the website.

Don Dennis died in 2007 and his mother Betty Dennis lives in Uniontown.