 Branch Rickey, a 1903 graduate of Ohio Wesleyan, is regarded as a significant figure in the history of professional baseball for breaking the sport's racial barrier.An racial incident early in Rickey's life when he was as a baseball coach for Ohio Wesleyan in 1910 would play an important role in his decision thirty years later.Rickey's team visited a hotel in South Bend, Indiana, where the hotel manager refused to provide a room for Rickey's black baseball player Charley Thomas.