After signing a professional baseball contract and thus becoming ineligible to continue his collegiate playing career, Branch Rickey ’04 becomes Ohio Wesleyan’s athletics director and baseball coach. During a baseball trip, Rickey’s catcher, Charles Thomas, a black student from Zanesville, Ohio, is denied lodging at a hotel in South Bend, Indiana. Rickey was able to convince the hotel manager to allow Thomas to stay in his room as an unregistered guest, but the event was burned into his memory and proved to be his inspiration in signing Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers over 40 years later.