ELY- Tom Coombe was five years old when he walked about a block from his grandmother’s house to the Ely baseball field, found a seat in the bleachers, and watched the city host a state tournament in 1975.
He has spent nearly every summer at the ballpark since.
Fifty-one years later, Coombe was back at another state tournament July 30, this time in Glenwood with the Ely American Legion team. During the tournament banquet, the longtime Post 248 head coach was inducted into the Minnesota American Legion Baseball Hall of Fame. His mind was racing as he approached the podium.
“I was hoping I didn’t screw anything up or didn’t forget when I spoke,” Coombe laughed. “That first of all, and second of all, I was happy that it happened when our team made the state tournament.”
Ely players, coaches, family members, and supporters were there to watch him receive the honor.
“It would have been humbling and rewarding at any time,” Coombe said. “But to walk up there with so many Ely people there to see it, that to me meant the most.”
Coombe has led Ely’s Legion program since 1994, collecting 650 victories and taking Post 248 to 14 state tournaments. But his connection to Ely baseball began long before he became its coach.
Both of Coombe’s parents grew up in Ely, and he attended school there through fifth grade before his family moved to Duluth. Even then, his summers continued to revolve around Ely and baseball.
“I came back and played baseball in the summers when I was a kid, even when I was living in Duluth,” he said. “My ties to Ely run pretty deep.”
His earliest memory of the ballpark dates to that first state tournament in 1975.
“I think there’s a picture of me in the Echo in 1975 sitting there in the bleachers, and yeah, I’ve been spending, you know, I probably have spent every summer at that field since,” Coombe said.
He continued returning throughout high school, although Legion eligibility rules prevented him from playing for Ely. Instead, he began helping Frank Ivancich with the team, starting a coaching partnership that continues today.
His route into coaching was hardly conventional. Coombe graduated from Duluth East and attended the University of Minnesota Duluth, but he didn’t play college baseball and wasn’t a former star building toward an obvious coaching career.
Instead, he helped with the UMD baseball team as a student assistant and worked as sports editor of the UMD Statesman. A communication major, he also earned a coaching certification.
“I really kind of caught the coaching bug there when I was doing that work with the baseball team,” Coombe said.
At age 22, Coombe was hired as Duluth Denfeld’s head high school baseball coach.
“I got that opportunity right away at a young age and loved it,” he said.
After graduating from UMD, Coombe returned to Ely to work for the Ely Echo. The job allowed him to remain involved with Ely summer baseball, and he continued coaching at Duluth Denfeld for a number of years as well.
His head coaching career extends beyond the Legion program he took over in 1994. Coombe coached BEST, the combined Babbitt-Embarrass-Soudan-Tower team, from 1998 through 2011 and led it to three state tournaments. BEST placed third in 2002.
The late Lon Lamppa served as his assistant throughout those 14 seasons.
“There was nobody better to coach with,” Coombe said. “I learned so much from him, and he had such a great rapport with kids. I wouldn’t be where I am today, coaching-wise, without those years coaching with him.”
After the ISD 2142 reorganization dissolved the BEST collaborative, Coombe stepped away from high school head coaching but later assisted with Ely’s program for six years. In 2018, following the retirement of Vermilion Community College head coach Ray Podominick, then-Provost Shawn Mina asked Coombe to take over the program.
“I thought that window had closed for me, but it opened up in 2018,” Coombe said. “It’s been one of the most rewarding parts of my coaching career.”
Three weeks before his interview with the Timberjay, Coombe and his wife attended a wedding in Hibbing. The groom, from Tallahassee, Fla., and one of the groomsmen, from Anchorage, Alaska, were the first two players Coombe recruited to Vermilion.
“Through Vermilion baseball, they formed a bond and a friendship,” he said. “Who would ever guess that all these years later they’d be involved in a wedding that’s taking place in Hibbing, Minnesota.”
For Coombe, those relationships and watching players develop matter more than victories.
“When the season ends, if you’ve got guys in tears or sorry to see it come to an end, you’ve done a pretty good job, because it shows that it means something,” he said. “It means something to them.”
In Ely, baseball has meant something for generations. Coombe and Ivancich, Ely’s longtime high school coach and a Legion assistant for roughly two decades, see themselves as caretakers of that tradition. Ivancich will receive his own recognition in January, when he is inducted into the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
“We often talk about, you know, we’re kind of carrying the torch or bringing it forward from where we were when we were growing up,” Coombe said. “I think we both have a real love for Ely baseball, and it’s been part of us for so long.”
The city’s commitment to the game is particularly evident during tournament weekends.
“You go to a lot of different places, and it’s just a game,” Coombe said. “When you come to Ely, especially on a tournament weekend, it’s an event. You’ve got the music, you’ve got the great concessions. It’s a ballpark, with that covered grandstand and that pavilion area on the third-base side. It’s something special.”
Creating that experience requires volunteers selling tickets, staffing concessions, preparing the field, and working in the press box from morning until the lights go out.
“It takes a ton of people to make that happen,” Coombe said.
One highlight from Coombe’s career came in 2012, when Ely’s high school, Legion, and VFW teams all advanced to state tournaments. The Legion team placed second at state and at a regional tournament in Wahpeton, N.D., where Ely defeated teams from Kansas and Las Vegas.
“The scoreboard said Ely one, Las Vegas zero, and I told them, I said, ‘You’ll never see that again, ever, anywhere,’” Coombe recalled. “When would a team from Ely play a team from Las Vegas? I wish someone would have taken a picture of that scoreboard that day.”
Yet that remarkable summer is only part of what he values about the program.
“There’s that connection, whether you played Legion baseball in Ely in the 1970s, or in the 1990s, or in the 2000s,” he said. “So many of them still have that connection to the program and follow along how we’re doing.”
Declining enrollment and fewer players will present challenges in the coming years. Coombe hopes that when he eventually steps aside, former players will take his place and carry the program forward.
“I’d like nothing better than to see Ely baseball as strong as it is today 20 years from now,” he said.
For the five-year-old who wandered into the ballpark in 1975, it is difficult to envision it any other way.
“I can’t imagine a summer without it.”