Apr. 4—Every statistic or record that Lewis-Clark State's Denny Grubb discovers has started with one question:
"Has this ever happened before?"
That question — asked countless times for nearly five decades at numerous Lewis-Clark State baseball, men's and women's basketball and NAIA World Series baseball games — has led Grubb to dedicate much of his life to being Lewiston's resident stat guru and to serve as the official scorer for 37 of the past 40 NAIA World Series.
On Saturday, the NAIA will welcome Grubb, a Lewiston native and long-time LC State statistician, into the Hall of Fame as a meritorious induction for his four decades of dedicated record keeping.
Grubb will make the trip to the NAIA Convention in San Diego with his family for the celebration.
"I never dreamed that a guy just keeping the official scorebook could get into a Hall of Fame anywhere," Grubb said.
A love for numbers
For a kid who was good at math, baseball was a natural love.
Grubb showed an affinity for arithmetic early in life, taking math tests for a grade above his own while in elementary school and later keeping statistics for his brother who broadcasted Lewiston and then Clarkston High School sports on the radio.
When he would get sick as a kid, his mother would give him baseball cards to entertain him. In 1969, Denny and his family traveled to Seattle to see the Pilots host the Baltimore Orioles, which started his lifelong love for the O's and emboldened his love for baseball.
"Baseball is numbers driven," Grubb said. "And that's kind of the way my mind has always worked."
Grubb played baseball at Lewiston High School. After he graduated in 1977, his coach, Dwight Church, reccomended him to LC athletic director Richard Hannan.
"They decided that my athletic skills proved that I would be a good stat man," he said.
Grubb was brought on as the Lewis-Clark State sports information director, although the position did not have that specific title at the time. He got a full-time job at the post office in 1979, but stayed involved with LCSC, keeping the stats for every home LC State baseball and basketball game.
He maintained this level of involvement for over 20 years until 2000 when LCSC hired a full-time sports information director.
Grubb continued to keep stats for baseball games and kept LCSC and local media such as KOZE radio, KLEW TV and the Lewiston Tribune updated on the Warrior record books.
Statkeeper of the NAIA World Series
In 1984, LCSC secured the hosting rights to the World Series for the first time. Grubb signed on to serve as statkeeper and soon discovered that the World Series record book was largely incomplete.
"I took it upon myself to update a record book that had about less than 100 entries to now we're over almost 1,500 different categories and names," Grubb said.
The process of building out both the LCSC and the World Series record books involved perusing the Lewiston Tribune archives and sending letters to coaches and athletic departments who provided Grubb with a slew boxscores and other information.
What started as a two, maybe three-year commitment to the World Series soon expanded.
LCSC kept renewing its hosting contract and the World Series stayed in Lewiston from 1984-91.
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When the series moved to Iowa in 1992, Grubb stayed involved. The NAIA flew him out to Des Moines, Iowa, and to Sioux City, Iowa, for much of the '90s to serve as the stat keeper.
He took a three-year hiatus from statkeeping the event when it moved once again but in 2000 found himself right back in his familiar chair ...
