By Larry Johnson
Iowa was a nice enough place to grow up — calm, with decent schools and friendly people. People are generally so polite and kind to strangers that there’s a name for their way of relating to the world. They call it “Iowa Nice.”
Iowa Nice failed earlier this week, though. Actually, “failed” is too weak a word for what happened. More like collapsed. Disintegrated. Exploded.
Just ask Jeremiah Chapman about Iowa Nice.
“Why do people have to be so mean?” Jeremiah texted his mother, Keisha Cunnings after his experience.
Jeremiah, who is 17, plays baseball for Charles City High School, headquartered in the typical Iowa small town of Charles City, population about 7.600. It’s the cite of Iowa’s last lynching, but that was in 1907. A sign at the entrance to the town proclaims it “America’s Hometown.”
It’s about 97 percent White, half of one percent Black, and a scattering of other races and ethnicities, so it’s not terribly diverse. The Charles City High School was playing Waverly-Rock in high school baseball. Waverly-Shell Rock is a county over and one down from Charles City.
Chapman was playing center field. The Waverly-Shell Rock fans seated just over the outfield fence began teasing the Charles City outfielders. Chapman wasn’t the only target. He wasn’t even the first. When it’s teasing and joking or even a little mean, it’s not a huge deal.
But in Chapman’s case, the “teasing” turned ugly and racial. The Waverly-Shell Rock fans reportedly compared him to Colin Kapernick (not a bad guy to be compared to), said he “should have been George Floyd,” (My God!) and told him to go back to the “fields” where he belonged. Presumably, the cotton fields. I don’t know. Far be it from me to read the minds of idiots.
Between innings, Chapman mentioned the incident to an umpire, who asked him if he wanted to stop the game. Chapman said no. Later, the incident was reported to Waverly-Shell Rock school officials, who verified it’s veracity from multiple sources. So this wasn’t a case of a hypersensitive teen-ager with rabbit ears, as they say in baseball about players who let spectators get inside their heads. This was real, and it was nasty.
The umpire didn’t need to stop the game, but he DID need to go to the outfield fence and warn the fans as a group. And if school officials indeed verified the story, as they claim, they probably know the offenders and could ban them from future games.
If they don’t, Iowa Nice doesn’t mean much. Maybe it never did.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
