"I'm delighted," Commissioner Bud Selig said. "To have young role models -- they're great kids and great citizens as well as extraordinary players -- does it help? In a huge way."
The Rays have five African Americans on their World Series roster -- Upton, Price, Carl Crawford, Cliff Floyd and Edwin Jackson -- believed to be the largest number since the 2002 San Francisco Giants.
But the Giants' contingent included no players younger than 33 -- and one named Barry Bonds. Baseball should not discount the effect that Bonds' absence might have as black youngsters watch the World Series, said Richard Lapchick, director of the diversity study.
"One of the reasons for the decline has been because the one African American superstar over the last decade has been somebody that the media and the fans have torn apart," Lapchick said. "When you see some of the players who will be there, that is going to be an encouraging sign."
Ron Miller said he'll be watching on television, and he'll try to get his friends to watch too.
Miller is a freshman at Crenshaw High, a Los Angeles athletic powerhouse with a history of baseball excellence, including star outfielder Darryl Strawberry. Miller's friends prefer football and basketball, but he prefers baseball.
In 1989, as baseball all but disappeared from the L.A. fields on which such stars as Strawberry, Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith had learned the game, scout John Young founded Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities, or RBI.
The program that Young started in Los Angeles has expanded throughout the country, funded by major league teams, corporate sponsors and foundations.
And, amid criticism that teams poured more money into developing players in the Dominican Republic than in U.S. urban areas, major league officials opened an academy in Los Angeles in 2006, providing free baseball instruction to talented young athletes.
Miller's father, also named Ron, said he could not afford the private lessons and travel teams so common among suburban youth.
Without the academy, he said, his son would have given up baseball.
"He'd be playing football," Miller said. "He's built like a linebacker. But he's in love with baseball now. He goes to the academy, and it's like going to Disneyland for him."
Darrell Miller, the academy director and no relation to the Crenshaw student, got a call recently from former Lakers star Mychal Thompson. One of Thompson's sons, Trayce, had played on a state championship basketball team at Santa Margarita High, but he wanted to pursue baseball.
