As Dave Roberts consistently played his cards right in guiding the Dodgers to the National League pennant, there was one card he declined to play. The race card.

Roberts, whose father was African American and mother is Japanese, has avoided controversy about racial issues during his two seasons as Dodgers manager, celebrating his place in the team’s history of ethnic barrier-breaking but offering only measured public comments on racial issues like Boston fans’ taunting of a black player last spring and professional athletes’ “take a knee” protests this summer and fall.

Asked this week about his racial distinctions, Roberts said it’s “very meaningful” for him to “represent a lot of people,” but said he’s trying not to think about what a World Series victory would mean in racial terms until after it’s won.

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Houston Astros management, hotel guests get into heated argument after World Series Game 1, police say Roberts’ restraint on the tricky topic does not diminish the significance of his role in the Dodgers’ run to the World Series, which continues Friday in Houston with the Dodgers and Astros tied at a game apiece.

If the Dodgers go on to win the best-of-seven-game series, Roberts will be the second African American manager to win a World Series (after Cito Gaston of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993) and the first Asian American manager to win baseball’s championship. Maybe most surprising, Roberts is currently the only African American manager in Major League Baseball (since Dusty Baker was fired by the Washington Nationals on Oct. 20).

This makes Roberts a rightful heir to the Dodgers’ long line of culturally important stars: Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color line in 1947 and touched off the then-Brooklyn Dodgers’ most successful decade; Sandy Koufax, a source of pride to Jewish fans as the most spectacular pitcher of the 1960s; Fernando Valenzuela, the franchise’s long-sought Mexican fan draw and an inspiration for its 1981 title; and Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park, respectively the major leagues’ first established Japanese import and first South Korea-born player.

It also makes the 45-year-old former outfielder a potential hero at a time when baseball is trying to reverse a decline in participation by African Americans over the past two decades, during which the percentage of African American players on MLB rosters has shrunk from about 17 percent in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s to less than 8 percent this season, and the number of black executives in baseball front offices remain tiny.

“This is an opportunity to have another pillar, another example, to say, ‘You can be a future Dave Roberts if you put in the work.’ ” — Renée Tirado, Major League Baseball’s vice president of talent acquisition and diversity and inclusion

The Dodgers’ and Astros’ 25-man World Series rosters reflect the trend. The Dodgers have no African American players, the Astros two, outfielders George Springer, who is biracial, and Cameron Maybin. Dodgers outfielder Curtis Granderson did not make the World Series roster; outfielder Andrew Toles was injured early in the season.

“Where are the role models for young African American athletes?” said Terry Cannon, executive director of the Baseball Reliquary, a Pasadena-based historical and cultural organization, and the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College. “All of the role models are in basketball and football. There are very few Dave Roberts to look up to if you’re an African American kid living in Los Angeles.”

Cannon said that if Jackie Robinson, who died in 1972, were alive today and saw the shrinking numbers of African Americans in baseball, he’d be disappointed. Worse, Cannon said, if Robinson, who was a multi-sport star at Pasadena’ Muir High and at UCLA, were deciding on his athletic future today, he quite likely would choose football or basketball over baseball. Just like huge numbers of black athletes who have spurned MLB for the NFL and NBA.

To illustrate what baseball loses as talented African American athletes switch to other sports: From 1955 to 1995, more than 40 percent of the two major leagues’ Most Valuable Player awards were won by African Americans, including 15 Hall of Famers. From 2008 to 2016, one of 18 MVP awards went to an African American (the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Andrew McCutcheon in 2013).

Unlike 30 years ago, when Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis’ remarks on “Nightline” drew attention to racist attitudes in baseball, explanations for low African American presence in baseball now focus less on discrimination than on economic and cultural factors that discourage inner city kids. Space for ball fields is scarce in inner cities. It costs more to sign a young athlete up for baseball than for other sports. Colleges offer fewer scholarships for baseball. (Roberts himself began his UCLA baseball career as a non-scholarship walk-on.) Players drafted receive lower signing bonuses, and often spend years in the minor leagues before earning big-league money.

Comedian Chris Rock, a baseball fan, has said the game doesn’t appeal to young black players because it’s too “old-fashioned and stuck in the past” and discourages celebrations.

Some of that is outside Major League Baseball’s control. But MLB is trying to turn the tide with youth programs such as Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities and Compton-based Urban Youth Academy, and management diversity programs.

“It’s not a problem we can solve overnight,” said Renée Tirado, MLB’s vice president of talent acquisition and diversity and inclusion. “We didn’t get here overnight.”

Roberts serves on the advisory board of MLB’s Diversity Pipeline Program. And Tirado said Roberts also can serve baseball’s diversity cause by winning the World Series.

“This is an opportunity,” Tirado said, “to have another pillar, another example, to say, ‘You can be a future Dave Roberts if you put in the work.’ ”

Cannon agreed. Up to a point.

“His success would be wonderful,” he said. “But the fact is it’s just one person.”