July 2, 2022

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Like many hockey players growing up in Canada, Gary Collins could also carry his weight in baseball.

Collins was a mean throwing left-handed pitcher in his Toronto youth and he won two consecutive Memorial Cup national junior hockey titles with the Toronto Marlboros in 1955 and 1956 and played in two NHL games -- both in the spring of 1959 -- with the Maple Leafs.

Collins certainly had the genes. His brother Merv played on the 1960 Grey Cup champion Ottawa Rough Riders.

Gary Collins is being remembered following his death June 12 at the age of 86.

Collins helped spark the Leaside-based Metropolitan Motors' baseball team to four consecutive city championships from 1953 to 1956 under the guidance of field manager Ron Roncetti.

Some of Collins' teammates at one time or another included the likes of fellow pitcher Ron Taylor, Frank Mahovlich, Charlie Burns and Bill Kennedy. During much of that tenure with the Motors, Burns was Collins' catcher.

The Motors’ squad was voted into the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame this year and not to forget Roncetti's accomplishments, he was elected into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame as a builder in 1998.

"In those days, Gary probably had the best curveball,'' recalled his teammate Ron Woods. "He could really spin the ball. He came right over the top with it and it was tough to hit.

"In today's world, his curveball wasn't like a slider but it had the same elements as a slider. The slider hadn't been invented yet. Gary would pitch three to four times a week and in those days, they didn't worry about pitch counts. He'd pitch six or seven innings every other day.''

A newspaper account of a midget game Collins pitched in on July 14, 1952 noted that "nary a ball went out of the infield last night as Gary Collins hurled a no-hitter. Collins fanned 10 and walked five in the seven-inning affair.''

Being a southpaw proved invaluable in many ways and it allowed him to throw batting practice for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International league.

Collins was talented enough to play eight games in the Pittsburgh Pirates' system in 1958 for North Dakota's Grand Forks Chiefs and Iowa's Clinton Pirates. His statistics over eight games that season as I saw online are listed under his first name Ranleigh, although he preferred to be called Gary.

His listing as Ranleigh was likely made because of how his name appeared on his birth certificate as he was going to play for a U.S. team. An arm injury in an era when Tommy John surgery didn’t exist forced Collins to retire from baseball.

One of his teammates with Grand Forks was future Montreal Expo Donn Clendenon and his teammate for one game with Clinton was former Expo Ron Brand.

Collins played a few years of junior hockey with the Kitchener-Waterloo Redshirts, a team sponsored by the Montreal Canadiens. He had been signed at age 15 to a C form by Canadiens representative Curly Davis and attended the Habs training camp as a 16-year-old, participating in workouts with the likes of Rocket Richard, Boom Boom Geoffrion and Butch Bouchard.

One of the other juniors at the Montreal workouts was Forbes Kennedy. Collins and Kennedy learned they could leave their hotel room, undiscovered, by using a service elevator. Kennedy found a bar where they could listen to country and western music.

Collins’ Canadiens’ rights were relinquished to the Leats when he was traded on Dec. 15, 1954 to the Marlboros. He enjoyed his best season with the Marlies in 1955-56 with 61 points.

After the Marlboros won the Memorial Cup in 1956, Collins was back on the diamond that summer, helping the Motors win the last of their four consecutive city titles.

Collins ended up playing in the minor-pro hockey ranks for many years, playing for such teams as the Rochester Americans, Quebec Aces, Pittsburgh Hornets, Johnstown Jets and San Francisco Seals.

Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe tried one season to send Collins to Chicoutimi in the Quebec league but he balked. The Toronto Star called his job action a “strike.’’

During the 1959 Stanley Cup playoffs, Collins was summoned to play two games for the Leafs. That was the season Punch Imlach made his NHL coaching debut after Billy Reay was fired.

In the first game of the ‘59 semi-final series between the Leafs and Bruins, Imlach called on Collins for the third period to replace Bert Olmstead, who had suffered a charley-horse injury earlier in the game. Collins also saw action later in the series.

Collins' non-sports career saw him work for decades in an administrative role for General Motors, beginning in March, 1964 at Richmond and Church streets in downtown Toronto.

"Gary would go in and check the dealers to make sure they were doing the right thing. He kept them on the straight and narrow,'' Woods said.

"Gary called on GM dealers and dealt with service issues and customer complaints,'' his partner Betty Bakin said in an interview.

Collins and Bakin found love at GM. They worked in the same GM department. They spent more than five decades together.

Rest in peace, Gary.