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nigger?”
    â€œNo, sir, I never did that.”
    â€œWhy did Robinson tell you what he would do if you referred to him as a nigger?”
    â€œI don’t rightly know, sir,” the man answered.
    The court-martial board did not buy that. Of course the guard called him that name. The case fell apart. The jury was out for about a half hour and Robinson was found not guilty on all charges.

CHAPTER THREE
    Branch Rickey never changes his tale. The fire in him to fix a nation began in 1904 on the practice fields at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he first saw Charlie Thomas play baseball.
    There is an away game against the University of Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana. Rickey, as student coach, booked his team into the Oliver Hotel there. Reservations were made well in advance. The hotel was delighted. After all, these were fine Methodists coming in. Maybe they weren’t Catholics, but they knew how to behave.
    The catcher for Rickey’s team is Charlie Thomas. His sloping shoulders and thick neck proclaim him a hitter. The big, young black hands are those of a catcher. Charlie Thomas is the first of his race ever to play at Ohio Wesleyan. This puts the school only a half-century ahead of the good Catholics of Notre Dame.
    The Ohio Wesleyan players came into the hotel cheerfully, Charlie Thomas among them. Then they reached the room clerk, whom Rickey described as being ready to defend his hotel to the death rather than let this young black man inside. The clerk suggested that Thomas go to the YMCA. Instead, Rickey sent the team manager to the Y to see about lodging for the entire squad. He reported back quickly that there were no rooms. Thomas, humiliated, said he would go back to school. Rickey took his arm and told him he was staying. He asked to see the hotel manager and mesmerized the fellow, reaching an agreement that Thomas could stay in Rickey’s room until a suitable black family was found to house him. No such thing was ever going to happen. Rickey took Thomas up to his room, then ordered a cot and called down to the manager, “Under no circumstances will I allow Thomas to leave.”
    Thomas sat in Rickey’s room and began crying. He rubbed one big hand over the other, saying, “Black skin, black skin. If I only could rub it off and make it white.”
    Rickey said, “Stop it. If you can’t beat this, how do you expect me to?”
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    Rickey is out of the mud and stone of Scioto County in Ohio’s southland. On his mother’s side, the Brown family was among the first Americans, one of eight families that sailed from Scotland to Massachusetts in 1646. The head of the Brown family, Daniel, had a grandson, George, who founded the Methodist Church in America. Rickey’s great-grandfather, David Brown, seemed off to a smashing start, too. He married Sallie Hubbard, whose family were weathly landowners that included a member of President Millard Fillmore’s cabinet. But David did not quite fit in. He drank anything in a bottle and fought anybody who happened to be nearby, whether in a church pew or in somebody’s parlor. He mortified his wife every sundown, when his thirst arose. He slipped through her passionate lectures against the drink and came out the other side clutching a bottle, his free hand in a fist. Any mention of politics was the sure start of a brawl. He said he was a Democrat and showed his loyalty to Andrew Jackson by breaking a leg in an election-day scuffle.
    David went west with a pregnant wife and a quarter to his name. They went by horse and wagon to Pittsburgh, and then aboard a raft on the Ohio River to Sciotoville. The population was somewhat over zero. They had four children before going farther into the wilderness with a baby strapped to the side of the ox wagon. His wife, Sallie, had the reins. David walked ahead, chopping brush and trees with an ax. They stayed there for a decade, raising vegetables. Sallie had great faith in