WILLMAR — Tom Elliott has been a fixture in the Central Minnesota sports scene for more than four decades.
His passion for amateur baseball goes back to 1982 when he was a part-time sports reporter for the St. Cloud Times. His passion for journalism and sports goes back to when he was growing up in Queens, New York.
“I started as a 12-year-old delivering newspapers,” said Elliott, now 65. “The last paper on the route was our apartment in New York City and I would read the paper every day. That started it.”
He became fascinated with amateur baseball during his time at the Times and has continued to be an authority on the subject since becoming the sports editor of the West Central Tribune in 2019. On Saturday, Sept. 19, he will get an honor that those who know him might be surprised he hasn’t already received: induction to the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. He will be honored during a ceremony at the River’s Edge Convention Center in downtown St. Cloud.
West Central Tribune sports editor Tom Elliott during a lighter moment at the newspaper’s office on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Willmar.
Joe Brown / West Central Tribune
“When I was growing up in New York City when I was a kid, the Mets won the World Series (in 1969) and lost in another World Series (in 1973),” he said. “The (NBA’s) New York Knicks won two world championships (in 1972 and 1973). The (NFL’s) Jets were playing in the Super Bowl (in 1969). They were 17-1/2 point underdogs and won that (over the Baltimore Colts, 16-7). They opened the Nassau Coliseum (in 1972) and the expansion (NHL) team (the Islanders) and ended up being really good right away.”
And, his father, Mac, was a sports fan.
“You get enraptured with it,” Tom said. “I literally lived about two miles from what was then called Shea Stadium. It was two subway stops from my house.”
After his parents divorced, Elliott and his mother, Mary, and younger brothers, Mike and Steve, moved to South St. Paul in 1974. Elliott worked at the high school newspaper before graduating in 1978.
“Moving from Queens and moving to South St. Paul, we thought we had moved to Mayberry,” he said. “Why is everyone white? Why is everyone nice? Why does everybody want to go fishing? New York City is a very different world.”
West Central Tribune sports editor Tom Elliott sits in the press box at the Mini Met in Jordan during a Class B state amateur baseball tournament game between the Raymond Rockets and the Watertown Red Devils on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026.
Joe Brown / West Central Tribune
Elliott was put into an accelerated track when he was in school in New York and ended up graduating from South St. Paul High School at the age of 17. Besides writing for the high school newspaper, he also wrote for the South St. Paul Sun weekly, played football and wrestled for the Packers. He loved sports, but was not going to go any further playing them.
“It occurred to me that to be around it, I was going to have to find another way to do it,” he said. “I didn’t see myself as a coach and I liked to write and I got good grades in English classes.”
After graduating from high school, he attended Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights.
“I started at Inver Hills thinking that I was going to be an accountant or an economics major,” he said. “They didn’t have anybody to be the sports editor. That’s what I was doing in high school and I was already getting paid to do it. I started doing sports for them. I got work study.”
Besides becoming the sports editor, he also began working in the college’s sports information department.
Tom Elliott
Contributed / Tom Elliott
After finishing his associate arts degree, he went to St. Cloud State University in the fall of 1980. When he took his first reporting class, Kevin Oklobzija, the University Chronicle sports editor, was the teacher’s assistant.
“I must have done something kind of sportsy and Klubby said, ‘Are you interested in sports?'” Elliott said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I sure am.’ He said, ‘Do you want to work at the Chronicle?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I sure do.’ I started working for him and he was (also working) part time at the (St. Cloud) Times.”
Oklobzija left the Chronicle and Elliott ended up inheriting his job, something that would happen again in a couple years.
“All the reporters at the Chronicle at the time were women and they didn’t know anything about sports and they asked me if I wanted to be the sports editor,” Elliott said. “I was into it. I had a pretty good year.”
Mike Killeen was the assistant sports editor at the Times and saw Elliott at a track and field meet at Selke Field.
“He asked me if I wanted to work at the St. Cloud Times,” Elliott said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I would love to work at the St. Cloud Times. That’s my goal, to get a newspaper job some day.”
Elliott began started at the Times in 1982. He was about to collide with a phenomenon somewhat unique to Minnesota — amateur baseball.
Dick Putz, a baseball umpire and in charge of local officials for several sports in the area, would bring in amateur baseball results on Sunday nights.
“I would traipse in there at 5 p.m. on Sunday evenings and I had to let Dick Putz into the office,” Elliott said. “There were no cell phones or internet in those days. So Dick would put every score in the area on little slips of paper. Dick would first call the Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Star. Then he’d call the St. Paul paper. Then he’d call a couple other places. Then he would call KASM (radio) in Albany and do the Dick Putz Show.”
Along the way, Putz introduced Elliott to a world he didn’t know much about.
Tom Elliott receives the 2019 Outstanding Media Service Award for print coverage by the Minnesota State High School League.
Contributed / Tom Elliott
“Dick Putz would butcher every name in the area,” he said. “It soon occurred to me that Dick Putz was one of the great characters of all time. I’d ask him a lot of questions because I didn’t really know anything about it. I was a kid from the (Twin) Cities. Dick introduced me to this wonderful world of characters and towns I’d never heard of. The reason I hadn’t heard of some of them is because some of them don’t exist. There’s no city of Farming. It’s a township out there with less than 40 people and a beautiful lighted field called Schlepers Stadium. It’s like, why is this park here?”
He also found a treasure trove of interesting people about whom he could write.
“What’s so fun about amateur ball is just about every guy out there does something else,” Elliott said. “He plays baseball for Farming on Sundays. But, oh by the way, he’s a priest the rest of the time. Or he’s an electrical engineer. I’ve written about doctors and lawyers. Plenty of farmers and truck drivers and construction workers. But every one of them has an interesting story. That’s what makes it … when you figure out, yeah, he’s a good second baseman, but he also does real estate during the week. There’s always a different part to the story that makes it more interesting. I latched onto it.”
Not too long after Elliott started working at the Times, the paper began publishing seven days a week. That meant a Sunday paper that needed more content.
“I said, ‘Well, this is easy. If we’re going to do this, let’s put an amateur baseball presence on Sundays,'” Elliott said. “I would do a notebook column. Herm Lensing did all the stats for the Stearns County League every week. I got on his mailing list. I would run the top batting averages, pitching leaders and home run leaders and all that. Rick Grammond was doing kind of the same thing for the Victory League. He was doing stats and he’s a radio guy. I would run the Victory League stats with the Stearns County League stats. I had a thing where I could get most of the Sauk Valley League. Everybody got all pumped up about this. I would do a breakout of the game of the week.”
Elliott worked part-time at the Times from 1982-85, graduated from SCSU and then was full time from 1985-94 after Oklobzija left for the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle.
From 1994-97, Elliott was the sports editor at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California. But he returned to the Times in September 1997 and worked there another 22 years until he left to become the sports editor at the West Central Tribune in Willmar. He intends to work until he’s “67, maybe 70,” before relocating to Michigan to be near his grandson. Until then, he continues to make art out of covering amateur baseball among other things.
On Saturday, he will be introduced by his brother, Mike.
“I’m probably going to have to go first,” Tom said of the induction speeches. “I’m nervous about that. I’m nervous about giving a speech in front of 360 people.”
The others being inducted include Tim Beier of Regal, Al ‘Fritz’ Drexler of Searles, Dale Mackedanz of Roscoe, Greg Odegaard of Arlington, Gary Schleper of Shakopee, Butch Steen of Raymond and ElRoy Vidlund of Watertown. All earned their own way into the Hall. But there’s only one Tom Elliott.
Tom Elliott worked at the St. Cloud Times from 1982-94 and then from Sept. 1997-Sept. 2019. Here he is pictured with former Times employees (from left) Kevin Allenspach, Tom Fenton, Mike Killeen, Tom Elliott, Frank Rajkowski, Jeff Haag, Andy Rennecke, Mick Hatten and Mitch Hansen in 2019.
Contributed / Tom Elliott