Branch Rickey, when most said “no” he said “yes”
During a recent trip to Ohio, with my old glove and ball in hand, I visited Rush Township Cemetery to honour Wesley Branch Rickey, the baseball executive whose courage helped challenge and reshape racist culture in America.
Branch Rickey’s family moved near the cemetery in Rushtown when he was just 18 months old. His parents, Jacob and Emily, were deeply religious, and Emily taught him Bible stories before he could even speak. Rickey’s devout Methodist faith would have a profound influence on his life, shaping a moral compass that guided his decisions both on and off the field.
Branch Rickey’s parents plot are beside his.
Guided by that faith, he attended Ohio Wesleyan University, a Methodist college, where he became an outstanding athlete in both baseball and football. During the 1903 season, on his team was Charles Thomas, a Black student from Zanesville, Ohio, and one of the first Black players in college baseball. That season, Thomas was denied lodging at a hotel in South Bend, Indiana. Rickey, who was coaching the team at the time, convinced the hotel manager to allow Thomas to stay in his room as an unregistered guest. The incident—and the sight of Thomas sitting on the bed in tears—was seared into Rickey’s memory.
Charles Thomas, (centre) was one of the first Black players in college baseball. Branch Rickey, coach, in suit far right.
Forty years later, Rickey, now a lawyer turned baseball executive, had not forgotten what happened in South Bend. He did the unthinkable for his era, signing Jackie Robinson to a Major League contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 10, 1947, breaking baseball’s modern-era colour barrier. Rickey chose Robinson in part because of their shared Methodist faith and Robinson’s commitment to a strategy of non-retaliation—an echo of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount teaching to “turn the other cheek.” Robinson later wrote that resisting the urge to fight back was extraordinarily difficult, but that “it works, because sooner or later it brings a sense of shame to those who attack you.”
Throughout Branch’s playing and working career, his faith was not a private sentiment but a public commitment. Rickey did not play, scout, negotiate, or conduct routine baseball business on Sundays as a matter of religious conviction. When Sunday matters arose, assistants, scouts, or club officials handled them, and Rickey addressed the issue on Monday morning.
A framed Brooklyn Dodgers banner from my personal collection, 1950’s.
Branch Rickey died on December 9, 1965, in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of 83. Yet the moral courage, faith, and vision he brought to baseball continue to inspire generations long after his time—including me.
