Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
connect (v.)
combines with the prepositions to and with: The pipeline connects the wellhead to [with] the storage tanks. By is used when one thing is connected to another by something. Sports and general use give us other meanings: The batter connected for a home run is sports argot, labeled Colloquial or Informal in most dictionaries. Either similarly labeled or slang is the intransitive use meaning “to succeed, to achieve whatever you were after,” as in I knocked on a hundred doors with no luck, but I finally connected; I found the right one.
