Background
Edward Trowbridge Collins was born on May 2, 1887 in Millertown, New York, United States. He was the only child of John Rossman Collins, a railroad freight agent, and his second wife, Mary Meade Trowbridge Collins.
Edward Trowbridge Collins was born on May 2, 1887 in Millertown, New York, United States. He was the only child of John Rossman Collins, a railroad freight agent, and his second wife, Mary Meade Trowbridge Collins.
He spent his boyhood in Tarrytown, New York, and was graduated from the Irving School, a private preparatory school, in 1903. In 1907 he received the B. A. degree from Columbia University. Irving school officials had recognized Collins' athletic abilities and established a trophy in his honor. At Columbia he so excelled in football and baseball that by his junior year Connie Mack (Cornelius McGillicuddy), manager of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team, sought his services.
In the summer of 1906 Mack signed and briefly played Collins under the pseudonym of Sullivan, a ruse designed to protect Collins' collegiate eligibility, but Collins was exposed for earlier semiprofessional experience in New England and was disqualified from participating in collegiate sports. In spite of this, Columbia officials appointed him baseball coach for his senior year, a rare honor for an undergraduate. In the summer of 1907 Collins rejoined the Athletics in the American League and soon became Mack's protégé and regular second baseman. By 1910 he was a nationally renowned star and along with "Stuffy" McInnis, Jack Barry, and "Home-run" Baker formed Mack's famed "$100, 000 infield, " which led the Athletics to four American League pennants and three World Series titles between 1910 and 1914. Mack viewed Collins as the best player he ever had, and Collins reciprocated this powerful endorsement with a lifelong loyalty to Mack. In his prime the slender, five-foot-nine-inch Collins weighed 155 pounds; his big ears, long nose, and sleepy-looking brown eyes belied his high intelligence. After the defeat in the 1914 World Series, financial reverses forced Mack to sell his best players. In 1915 Collins, who was twenty-seven years old, went to the Chicago White Sox for $50, 000, at that time the highest price ever paid for a ballplayer. Bargaining shrewdly, Collins won a percentage of his sale price as well as a $15, 000 annual salary, arousing jealousy among some of his teammates who considered themselves poorly paid by the owner, Charles A. Comiskey. Although torn by factionalism the team won a pennant and World Series in 1917, but two years later they lost the World Series in what was known as the Black Sox Scandal. In its wake eight men were barred from baseball for accepting bribes. Collins was not involved in the incident and remained with the team until 1926, serving as player-manager in his last two seasons. In 1927 Collins rejoined Mack as player-coach, coaching third base for the champion Athletics from 1929 to 1931. As Mack's apparent successor, Collins turned down a 1929 offer to manage the New York Yankees. Mack, however, chose to remain with the team and in 1933 urged his friend to accept a proffered post as general manager of the Boston Red Sox. For thirteen years Boston had been a moribund American League franchise, but in 1933 the millionaire Thomas A. Yawkey bought the club. An Irving School graduate, Yawkey had long idolized Collins and immediately hired him as his chief adviser; Collins served as club vice-president, general manager, and treasurer. In his first five years he directed the expenditure of more than $1 million for player talent that would make the club a pennant contender. In that time he purchased seven stars of the Athletics from the hard-pressed Mack and paid $250, 000 to acquire Joe Cronin as player-manager. Later, on a scouting trip, Collins signed Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr, both future stars. By the end of the decade he had built the efficient Red Sox farm system that developed the players who would perform with the 1946 champion Red Sox. Altogether Collins' seventeen-year tenure in Boston produced only one championship, but he made "Yawkey's millionaires" one of baseball's healthiest and best-administered franchises. As leader of the champion Athletics, Collins had earned the nickname "Cocky, " a grudging tribute to his tactical understanding of baseball. He had brilliantly displayed this quality in the 1917 World Series when, playing for the Chicago White Sox, he took quick advantage of a fielding lapse to dash home with the winning run of the final game, hopelessly pursued by the New York Giants third baseman. A fleet runner, Collins twice in one season stole six bases in a game and twice stole more than sixty in a season. Perennially overshadowed by the great Ty Cobb, in the end Collins outdid Cobb by playing in six World Series and coaching in three others. In 1939 Collins joined Cobb as a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1950 a narrow defeat by the New York Yankees and a chronic heart condition prompted his resignation from the Red Sox. He died in Boston the next year.
He married Mabel Harriet Doane on November 3, 1910. They had two sons, one of whom, Eddie T. , Jr. , later served Mack both as a player and as an administrator. In February 1945, two years after the death of his first wife, Collins married Emily Jane Mann Hall.
