Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1912 — BASEBALL-OGRAPHY OF EDDIE COLLINS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BASEBALL-OGRAPHY OF EDDIE COLLINS

By HOMER CROY.

In a big leather backed Bible resting squarely in the middle of the parlor table close up beside “Paradise Lost” and “The Life and Deeds of Davy Crocket” at Tarrytown, N. Y., where he was born, you can find the rooly treally name of Eddie Collins — EdwJird Trowbridge Collins. All that, just as if it was being called out by the president of the board of education —who is also proprietor of the Elite Feed Store and the Bon Ton Coal Yard—on graduation day at the high school. Seats reserved for fathers add mothers —flowers should be sent to the Sunday school room. The man at the half-way house of the Philadelphia Athletics began being called a phenom so early in life that every night before he went to bed Se spent half an hour greasing his own with cold eream, and every Mme he found a hair on his upper lip he would turn three complete somersaults in the hotel bedroom and jump up and bump his head Jigainst the ceiling until the feeble old lady on the floor above had to telephone for another bottle of smelling salts, y v He Is still one of the youngest of the big league stars; his manager never lets him go out on the street alone at night after nine o’clock, and when the team is out on a tour the rest of the boys have to wash his hands and tie on his night cap. He entered Columbia as a student, but graduated as a baseball player, giving up his time between baseball, football, basket ball, handball, water polo, tennis and track to an earnest study of Blackstone. Laying aside his quarter cover buckram for a full cover horsehide he took up baseball for good at a salary so comfortable that in stepping on a penny weighing machine as a friend was getting off he didn’t care if the thing went back bang! and locked—he had that much money;-. /.

In 1910 he came to bat with Cupid in the box and made the home run of his life, and now the two have a home of their own in Clifton Heights, a suburb, of Philadelphia, with a pianola in the parlor and honest-to-goodness chickens in the back yard. He never grows tired of talking about his pianola and his chickens, and to him the sweetest music in the world Is a duet between a pianola and a pullet, with his wife putting the silverware on In the dining room. He can sit back in his bay window with his feet on the window sill and by the cackle tell which one of his hens has laid an egg and which one is up. -- - i He never smokes and never got a larruping in his life for sneaking out behind the millet stack with the rest of the gang and smoking a grapevine until it turned him so far Inside out that he had to hold his epiglottis in with his thumb. He thinks that the man who uses the vile Weed Is going to that region where war Is one continuous program from 11 a. m. till 11 p. m., children in arms not admitted;; 1 but he himself is wild about chocolate ice cream, believing that the other place in the skies is a magnificently fitted up drug store where the seats at the soda fountain are upholstered, and where a chorus of angels play golden harps while pages*lh short trousers flap up on their golden wings bearing straws with cork tips, urging you in silvery tones to have another. The ambition of his life is to write a book—a real book with his name on the cover —and he says the one supreme blissful moment of his existence would be to lay his book on the center table, turn on the pianola, and then have one of his Plymouth Rocks walk up on the porch and crow while his own private ticker inside rattled off the baseball score. (Copyright, 1911, by W. G. Chapman.)

Eddie Seen by Cesare.