A 1930 Mail Pouch Tobacco ad featuring Harry Warren ‘Rip’ Collins of the st. Louis Browns.
“A Chew like Mail Pouch actually has a steadying effect on a man’s nerves.”
Collins’ nerves were good for a 108-82 record over 11 major league seasons and for a career as a Texas Ranger.
In November 1926, “Baseball Magazine” declared his career a bit of a disappointment–but for a reason– Collins was simply “Born a hundred years too late.”
The magazine said:
“Collins came to the big leagues an unbranded maverick, wild as a Brahma steer from his own beloved Texas cattle land. Nature, with a lush prodigally, had endowed him with athletic skill of the highest order. Six feet one he stood with muscles like tempered steel, 205 pounds of raw, crude strength. He had blinding speed, more sheer stuff, perhaps, than any pitcher has shown since Walter Johnson came out of the mountains of Idaho to create one of the great pitching records in history.”
The magazine said while:
“He might have been a marvelous hurler. He has been merely good.”
The reason he never reached his potential:
“Rip has been guided through life, for good or ill, by the untamed spirit of the wilderness. He chafed under irksome restraint. He hated big cities, crowds, the luxuries of an old and possibly decadent civilization. He abominated the petty jealousies and the bickerings and the small politics on a big league ball club.”
Collins said:
“When I have finished the baseball season, I can’t be cooped up any longer. I take my rattle trap Ford and go down to the wild country of the Rio Grande where you can go days with out seeing anybody. I’m homesick for the call of the coyote.”
Collins said he was better suited “for the pioneer days” than the baseball diamond.
He said he joined the Texas Rangers because he was turned down by the United States Army when he first attempted to enlist, because of two bad knees–one injured during the a football game with the Haskell Indian School when he was at Texas A &M, and the other he hurt playing basketball. The Ranger accepted him he said, caring only that he could ride a horse and shoot.
Of his time with the Rangers, and how it differed from the army in which he later served:
“In the Regular Army a soldier’ll say to the corporal, ‘shall I shoot?’ The corporal will ask the captain and the captain will wire the War Department for instructions The Rangers don’t believe in asking unnecessary questions.”
The magazine said Collins’ “people were strongly opposed to the professional game.” And he said they still were not completely accepting:
“Even now, they look at it with a little suspicion, though they always get the papers and look up the box scores.”
Collins, who told “Baseball Magazine” he learned how to pitch “throwing rocks at jack rabbits,” admitted he didn’t have a great commitment to the game:
“Baseball to me, has been only a simple way to make a living. I like the game, but I’d rather pitch in the Texas League where I could go fishing the next day, than to be a star in the majors.”
In the end, Collins said he was “condemned, at present” to a life staying in “swell hotels” instead the life he desired.
Collins remained “condemned” in the major leagues through the 1931 season–he reappeared in the Texas League for 10 games in 1933.
Baseball History Daily 