When he leads the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night, the AL and NL champions are expected to play without a black player born in the US for the first time since 1950, shortly after Jackie Robinson was ousted. Major League Baseball Color Block. It’s a fact that deeply bothers the 73-year-old Baker, one of only two black managers in MLB, who has spent his entire life either playing or coaching baseball. “What hurts is I don’t know how much hope it gives to some of the young African-American kids,” Baker told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Because when I was their age, I had a bunch of guys, (Willie) Mays, (Hank) Aaron, Frank Robinson, Tommy Davis — my hero — Maury Wills, all those guys. We have to do something before we lose them.” Jackie Robinson debuted in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and played in the World Series that year. Since then, the 1950 game between the New York Yankees and the Phillies was the only World Series without a US-born black player. Houston and Philadelphia will announce their 26-man rosters several hours before Game 1 on Friday night at Minute Maid Park, and neither is expected to have a black player born in the US. Michael Brantley, a Black outfielder for Houston, is out for the season with a shoulder injury. “I don’t think that’s something baseball should really be proud of,” said Baker, who won a World Series as an outfielder with the Dodgers in 1981 and is seeking his first championship as a manager. “It looks bad. It lets people know that it didn’t take a year or even a decade to get to this point.” Indeed, the declining number of black MLB players has been an issue for years. Richard Lapchick, director of the Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports is the lead author of his group’s annual reports on diversity hiring practices in sports. He said black players made up just 7.2 percent of the opening day roster this year, the lowest percentage since the study’s data was first collected in 1991, when 18 percent of MLB players were black. Beginning in 1954, when Mays and the New York Giants played against Larry Doby and Cleveland, every team that reached the World Series had at least one American-born black player until the 2005 Astros. The Phillies had no black players on their starting roster this year for the first time since 1959. Roman Quinn, a black backup outfielder, played 23 games before being released. Philadelphia rookie Darrick Hall made his debut in late June and played 41 games — his mother is white and his father is both black and white, and he identifies as multiracial. Hall was not on the Phillies’ roster for any of the first three rounds this postseason and is not expected to be on the World Series roster. Last summer, for the first time in MLB draft history, four of the first five players selected were Black. All four, along with more than 300 major leaguers, including Atlanta’s Michael Harris II, Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene, Pittsburgh’s Ke’Bryan Hayes and Milwaukee’s Devin Williams, have participated in MLB’s diversity-based initiatives , such as MLB Youth Academy, DREAM Series and Revi. Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) Program. Although “very disappointed and disheartened” with the situation this year, Baker hopes the top lineup of the most recent draft means this will be the last World Series where black US-born players are not represented. “There is help on the way,” he said. “You can tell by the number of African-American number one picks. Academies produce players. So hopefully in the near future we won’t have to talk about this anymore or even be in this situation.”

AP Baseball writer Ben Walker contributed to this story.

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