Remembering the men who weren't called out

Watch "Field of Dreams," and you won't see Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, Red Faber, Dickey Kerr or manager Kid Gleason emerge from rows of Iowa corn.

When eight men, better known as the Black Sox, were called out for throwing the 1919 World Series, they gained mythical status as baseball's version of Greek tragedy.

Members of the "darned but clean" Sox, the remnants of Charles Comiskey's would-be dynasty are just as worthy of remembrance. Collins, Schalk and Faber were enshrined in Cooperstown, while Collins and Gleason shared the World Series glory denied them in 1919.

One of the greatest second basemen of his time, "Cocky" Collins regularly led the league in games played and set an American League record for longest service as an active player, 25 years.

Nine times he led second basemen in fielding. He led the league in stolen bases in 1910 and 1919, twice nabbing six in one game and stealing 81 bases in 1910.

From 1906 to 1930 he had a record 511 sacrifice hits. He finished his career with 3,315 hits and 741 steals.

Collins helped Connie Mack's Athletics win three world championships in the 1910s, before Mack sold him to the White Sox when he broke up the dynasty.

In 1917, Collins and the Sox celebrated a world championship, the team's last until 2005.

There was no love lost between Collins, captain of the disgraced 1919 team, and the Black Sox - when the scandal broke in 1920 he and others who weren't implicated shared a celebratory dinner.

In contrast to his tarnished teammates, he was lauded as a clean player, although one of the Black Sox, Swede Risberg, accused Collins and other teammates in 1927 of contributing to a fund to pay the Detroit Tigers to lose a series in 1917. Others contradicted Risberg, saying the money was a reward for Detroit beating rival Boston.

Collins was named Sox manager in late 1924. In a decade viewed as a disaster on the South Side, he managed to guide the team to two seasons with winning records before he was replaced by Schalk.

Schalk, a 1917 world champion, was a model of durability behind the plate.

"Cracker," as he was called, transformed the catching position, becoming one of the first backstops to back up infield and outfield throws.

With his speed, he set a single-season stolen base record for catchers - 30 - that stood until John Wathan of Kansas City broke it in 1982.

From 1912 through 1926, Schalk caught 1,737 games. In 1922, he caught Charlie Robertson's perfect game, major league baseball's last until Don Larsen's in 1956.

Schalk's managerial career was not a success. The team suffered a setback in 1927 with the attempted suicide of outfielder Johnny Mostil.

Schalk eventually wound up on the North Side, coaching the Cubs in 1930 and 1931.

Although he was one of the first to voice suspicions about the 1919 series, Schalk subsequently maintained a staunch silence about the scandal until his death in 1970.

Schalk's battery mate on the 1917 champions, Urban "Red" Faber, was a mainstay on the Sox staff both before and after the scandal, pitching until age 44.

One of the last of the spitball pitchers - he was "grandfathered" in when the pitch was outlawed - Faber pitched with the Sox from 1914 to 1933, winning 254 games.

One of the most intriguing figures of the 1919 series was Kerr, who nearly spoiled the fix by winning two games against Cincinnati, including pitching a three-hit 3-0 shutout.

Kerr's career, however, would be just as doomed as his banished teammates.

In 1922, amid a contract standoff with Comiskey, Kerr, who had won 40 games in 1920-21, signed with a semipro Chicago team. When Kerr began playing for the semipro squad, he was suspended from baseball by Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. It wasn't until 1925 that Kerr pitched again in the majors, for the White Sox under manager Collins.

Kerr went 0-1 with a 5.15 ERA in his last season.

Baseball had a significant second act waiting for Kerr. While managing the St. Louis Cardinals' farm team at Daytona Beach, Fla., he convinced a pitcher named Stan Musial to concentrate on hitting.

Musial would name his son after Kerr and later buy Kerr and his wife a home in Houston, where Kerr died in 1963.

The final chapter of Kid Gleason's life would bring its reward as well. Robbed of a World Series victory as a manager and heartbroken by the scandal, Gleason would be reunited with Collins when both were coaches on Mack's 1929 and 1930 championship teams.

In 1959, the battery of Faber and Schalk would again step onto their field of dreams for a ceremonial first pitch before the Sox-Dodgers World Series.

The scene wasn't heaven or even Iowa. But it was even better. It was Comiskey.