Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
[T]he saying goes that outside the United States, anyone who lives in the country is a “Yankee.” In the American South, Yankees are people who live in the North. In the North, Yankees are New Englanders. And in New England, Yankees are people who eat pie for breakfast.
Boston Red Sox pitcher Ray Collins was proud to be called a Yankee in all those senses. Well, we don’t actually know what he ate for breakfast. But it seems safe to say that the only kind of Yankee Collins might have been less than fond of played baseball for a team in New York.
Collins took his Yankeeness seriously. In a 1911 Baseball Magazine survey, he listed his nationality as Yankee.
He wasn’t completely joking, as Vermont baseball historian Tom Simon points out in “Green Mountain Boys of Summer,” the definitive work on the state’s baseball greats. Collins, as Simon explains, was descended from William Bradford, who was the second governor of the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts. Collins was also kin to Capt. John Collins, one of Burlington’s founders.
By the time Ray Collins was born in 1887 – a full century after Capt. Collins moved to the area – the family had moved only as far north as Colchester. There, Ray Collins grew up on the family’s nearly 400-acre farm and spent much of his free time playing sports.
Collins was a talented athlete, playing basketball and tennis well enough to be named captain of those teams while attending Burlington High School. He continued to play both sports after he arrived at the University of Vermont in 1906. But baseball was his true love and his greatest gift. He’d been captain of that team in high school, too.
From the moment he reached UVM, Collins’ preternatural gifts for playing baseball came to the fore. He won the first game he pitched in, surrendering only one earned run. Later that year, Collins came within one out of no-hitting a dominant team from Williams College.
His freshman year performance earned him praise in a prominent baseball magazine. By the start of his sophomore season, major league scouts were onto him. The New York Highlanders offered him $3,000 to play for them starting in July. He turned them down, figuring he wasn’t quite ready for the big time. Instead, he pitched in several New England leagues that summer, including the Vermont State League.
Collins continued to bring misery to hitters. A sports writer in Maine, after watching Collins fold and unfold his lanky frame as he delivered each pitch, colorfully likened the experience to watching “an explosion in a leg and arm factory.”
During his first three years at UVM, Collins shared the spotlight with Larry Gardner, who was the team’s third baseman and offensive leader. Gardner, who was being pursued by the Red Sox, finally accepted their contract offer and left school to pursue a professional baseball career. Collins wanted to graduate before trying the majors.
Even without Gardner, Collins and his teammates managed to rack up a 13-9 record. In his last game at the school, Collins led UVM to a 4-1 win over Penn State, striking out 19. The win capped Collins’ career as probably the greatest pitcher to come out of UVM, which was then a baseball powerhouse.
Collins had declared himself unprepared two years earlier when approached by big league scouts. Now, he was anything but. He signed with the Red Sox and, shortly after graduating from UVM in the spring of 1909, joined the team.
He lost his first start for Boston, but proved he belonged. Boston fell 4-2 to the Detroit Tigers that day, but Collins managed twice to strike out Ty Cobb, the most feared hitter of his generation. (Throughout his career, Collins’ awkward pitching delivery would give Cobb fits. Despite the on-field rivalry, the players had a cordial relationship off the diamond, something few people managed with the bad-tempered Cobb.) Just a week into his career, Collins faced the Tigers again. This time, he shut them out.
The next season, Collins was named to the starting pitching rotation and won 13 games. He surrendered an average of only 1.62 runs per game that year, sixth best in the league.
By today’s standards, Collins and his fellow pitchers bore an incredible workload, sometimes pitching both halves of a doubleheader. During his career, Collins faced – and beat – some of the game’s best pitchers, including Hall-of-Famers Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.
Photos taken during his playing days show Collins as square-jawed and handsome, with a mop of dark hair. His looks and rising stardom made him a heartthrob. A Boston newspaper reported that, “He is the idol of all the lady fans, those bewitching young women, who coyly gaze from under piles of feathers and ribbons.” After the 1911 season, Collins got married, but his bride was probably not one of those “bewitching” fans. Her name was Lillian Marie Lovely, the sister of one of Collins frat brothers.
When Collins returned to baseball for the 1912 season, the Red Sox were in their new stadium, which they named Fenway Park. That year, he helped anchor a pitching staff that led Boston to the American League pennant. During the World Series, Collins outdueled Mathewson in Game 2, leaving with a 4-2 lead in the eighth. The Sox lost the lead, however, and the game was called a tie when darkness fell, an event that sometimes occurred in the days before stadium lighting.
Collins pitched a seven-inning shutout in relief in Game 6, though the Red Sox lost the game. They did not, however, lose the World Series. They were crowned the best team in baseball that year, thanks in no small part to Collins.
Though the Red Sox didn’t manage to win the World Series in 1913 or ’14, those were Collins’ most successful years. He won 19 in 1913 and had picked up 18 wins by late September the following year. He earned wins number 19 and 20 on Sept. 22, when the Sox manager started him in both halves of a doubleheader against the Tigers. He gave up only three runs during the two games.
The Red Sox won the World Series again in 1915, but it was a terrible year for Collins. It would also be his last in the major leagues.
Perhaps it was just a slump. Perhaps Collins had worn out his arm with all that pitching. For whatever reason, he wasn’t himself. He gave up an average of more than four runs a game, a high number in the so-called “dead-ball era” when home runs were a rarity. With a surplus of good arms on the team, the Sox relegated the 28-year-old Collins to a support role in the bullpen. There, he perhaps could dream of what his future would in fact hold – a return to his Colchester farm and a stint as UVM’s baseball coach.
One place he wouldn’t return was to the Red Sox’ starting rotation. His spot had been taken by another lefty – a guy named Ruth, who, according to at least one definition, would go on to become the most famous Yankee of them all.
