Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa

Less than. Incomplete. On your way up, or down, or out.

It has a uniquely negative connotation that sort of sums up how the City-States treat the provinces in just about every field now.

Branch Rickey broke it all.

Oh sure, blah blah blah Jackie Robinson, colour line, ripple effect on American race relations… Barack Obama. Mr. Rickey was, as Billy Beane would do generations later, simply leveraging undervalued markets, which is what he had been doing all his career.