For this is an era when some major-league teams find their rosters all but devoid of African American players. The Phillies? The team almost has an embarrassment of riches, counting 2006 National League MVP Ryan Howard, all-star shortstop Jimmy Rollins, and reliever Tom Gordon among its front-line players.
All three are marketed by the team. And Howard and Rollins, both homegrown products, are integral parts of the team's vaunted youthful lineup.
Off the field, the Phils boast one of the game's marquee urban youth programs, last year sponsoring more than 7,500 children throughout the Philadelphia area in Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) leagues.
When the Phillies' branch of baseball's RBI initiative started in 1989, just 200 children participated in what was then a lone neighborhood Puerto Rican Rookie League.
On Sunday, RBI participants will help the Phillies mark the April 15, 1947, debut of Robinson before an afternoon game against the Houston Astros at Citizens Bank Park.
"The club is taking the extra step because it's the right thing to do," said Gene Dias, the Phillies' community relations director. "[Commissioner] Bud Selig has said that Jackie Robinson breaking the barrier was the greatest moment in baseball history, and I agree."
Before Sunday's game, the Phils will introduce four members of the Philadelphia Stars, who faced Robinson when he played in the Negro leagues. Local Jackie Robinson scholarship winners will be honored (Penn's Stefon Burns, Temple's Deidre Little, and high school student Matt Howard, from the Phillies' RBI leagues), along with Jim Ellis, the coach who produced nationally ranked black swimmers and is the subject of the movie Pride. Donna Allie, an African American single mother who started a cleaning company that grew to more than 260 workers, also will be honored.
