Sure, he was “a little guy,” in Terry Collins’ own words, but he could play some ball. Well enough that, as a Midland High School student, he committed to play for a men’s summer league team.
During the days while school was out, he worked a blue-collar job for Dow Chemical, the small Michigan town’s flagship company that also employed his father, Loren “Bud” Collins.
“I worked on a railroad. We laid track,” Terry Collins recalled Thursday, as the Mets prepared to play the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. “I got home from the job one day, and I was just exhausted.
“The phone rang, it was the coach: ‘We’ve got a makeup game tonight.’ I told my dad, ‘Man, I don’t want to go.’
“He said, ‘Did you tell him you’d be on the team? Go.’
“I took a shower and went and played the game. That was the rule he lived by: You made a commitment, go play. And by the way, go play hard.”
Bud Collins died in February in Midland, at 95, after a series of heart attacks felled him during a 10-day period. Terry Collins left Mets camp in Port St. Lucie just as pitchers and catchers were reporting so he could be with his father at the end.
Now, as Collins attempts to reach a new professional peak at age 66, with the Mets fighting for their first playoff appearance since 2006 and Collins for his first postseason appearance in 11 years as a big-league manager, he climbs this mountain without his biggest cheerleader. The man who gave him not just a love of baseball, but a personal belief system that Collins carries forward. It’s a code of living that prioritizes work ethic, humility and an appreciation that “You can’t win ’em all,” as Bud often conveyed to his son.
So Father’s Day Sunday, his first without his dad, “will be hard,” Collins acknowledged. However, he looked toward it the same way he has attacked each day of this Mets season: with a single-mindedness that honors his father.
“The majority of my life has been to stick my fingernails and teeth into something and do the best I can at it. I don’t think that’s changed,” he said. “When I knew he was going to pass, I said, ‘I’ve got to close this first before I can do the other thing,’ and I did. I’m able to go about my job.
“I think about him. I think about him on Sundays. I called him every Sunday, [after] day games on Sundays, [Collins’ wife] Debbie will call her mom, who lives in Midland. I always think, ‘Jeez, this is when I used to call my dad.’
“I feel fine, because I know I did what I thought I should do.”
That closure carries immense weight with Collins, because he knows too well what it’s like not to have it. In 1985, Collins was managing the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in Albuquerque, N.M., when he received a call: His mother, Choyce Collins, had suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. Terry worked to hurry home but didn’t make it in time before Choyce died.
“There’s days when I think about my mom, when I feel terrible,” Collins said. “Do I know she knows I loved her? Yeah. But I never got to say goodbye.”
So for the nearly 30 years that Bud Collins lived as a widower, his son made sure to leave no ambiguity. Even though his work kept him constantly away from Midland, Terry made it home when his schedule allowed it and kept in regular contact with his dad. It seemed like the least he could do for the man who had given him so much.
It was around 1980, Collins recalled, when he questioned his future in baseball. He worked as a player-coach in the minors, and he hadn’t landed a minor-league managing job that he wanted. He received an offer to work for Archer Daniels Midland (and play for the company softball team) in Decatur, Ill. He approached his father, who worked his way up to labor relations coordinator at Dow, with his dilemma.
“Why are you interested [in the job]?” Bud Collins asked his son, according to Terry.
“Because I don’t have anything you have,” Terry responded. “I own my clothes, and I own [a] car. That’s it.’ I wasn’t married, and I didn’t have a house.“ ‘That’s all I own,’ ” Terry continued to his dad. “ ‘I always missed the things that you had, and that is your friends and the Fourth of Julys and the Labor Days and the Memorial Days and the New Year’s Eves with all your buddies and wives and families.’ The picnics and all that stuff, that was my whole life. My whole youth growing up was knowing these people. They were all softball buddies.’
“He said to me, ‘Let me tell you something.’ He said, ‘There’s a lot of times we’ve lived our life through you. Where we used to say, “Wow, what a great life he’s got.” You’re independent. You’re doing the thing we all wish we could do.
“ ‘Now, if it’s not fun anymore, stop. But you’ve had a ball in your hand since you could walk. If that’s not fun anymore,’ he said, ‘those jobs will always be there.’
“And I went back to baseball.”
When Collins managed his first big-league game for the Astros on April 4, 1994, a home game against the Expos, Bud Collins attended the contest (a 6-5, 12-inning Astros victory) at the Astrodome.
While Bud Collins cheered for his son, he never judged and never butted in. Terry Collins’ managerial career crashed in 1999, when his Anaheim Angels unraveled via a de facto players’ rebellion and he resigned in early September.
“I never called my dad until I resigned,” Collins said. “I called him that afternoon. The only thing he said was, ‘Are you OK?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ It was all he asked. When I went home, he said, ‘What happened?’ I gave him my side of the whole thing.
“He didn’t blame the players. He just said, ‘Hey, if that’s what you thought you had to do, I’m behind you.’ ”
Sandy Alderson’s designation of Collins as manager of the 2011 Mets ended an 11-year stint on the sidelines — during which time he scouted for the Cubs, coached with the Devil Rays, worked in the Dodgers’ front office, managed the Orix Blue Wave in Japan and Team China in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and served as the Mets’ minor-league field coordinator in 2010 — and afforded
Bud Collins one more chance to see his son in action. When the Mets visited the Tigers at Comerica Park in June 2011, the elder Collins joined two busloads of Midlanders for the two-hour drive. There, Terry Collins got to introduce his father to his mentor and friend, Tigers skipper Jim Leyland.
While Bud Collins played softball for championship-winning Dow teams, he rarely talked Xs and Os with his son. He watched Mets games on TV yet usually fell asleep before they ended, and his first call the next morning would be to Terry’s sister Connie Altimore with a simple question: “How’d he do?”
“He used to say, ‘How’s things in New York City?’ ” Terry Collins said “Then he’d tell the story about the time he and my mom went to New York City. … He used to ask me about the players all of the time. He always wanted to know, ‘What’s this guy like? What’s that guy like? Got any bad guys on your team?’ He was more into the personalities.”
Bud Collins spent most of this past January with Collins in his Florida house.
“All of a sudden, one day, he said, ‘I think it’s time to go home,’ ” Terry Collins said.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s minus-15 in Midland.’ ”
“He said, ‘It’s still home. It’s time for me to go home.’ ”
Terry flew to Michigan and got his dad settled into the condominium he had bought for him in the late 2000s, and a few days later, Bud Collins suffered his first heart attack. Twice in those final 10 days, doctors told the Collins family that Bud probably wouldn’t make it through the night. Twice, the doctors wound up overly precautionary.
“What are you, a [bleeping] cat?” Terry joked to his father, who laughed.
Father and son held heart-to-heart chats, as Bud knew he had very little time left.
“He asked me one day, ‘When you’re thinking about things, what is one of the things you think about?’ Terry Collins recalled. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Dad, you know what it is? I wish you would have had a dad like you.’ His dad left him when he was 7 or 8 and was living in the mountains of West Virginia. He didn’t see his dad again until he was 17.
“ ‘I wish you had had somebody like you.’ ”
Bud Collins asked his son something else in those last days, turning back to Terry’s work: “Are you still having fun?”
“I said, ‘Yes I am,’ ” Terry Collins relayed.
“He said, ‘How long are you going to want to do this?’
“I said, ‘As long as it’s still fun.’ ”
And as long as Terry can live by his dad’s words and actions: “When you do something, you give it all you’ve got.” That’s the best way he knows to celebrate this first Father’s Day that won’t wrap up with a phone call home.