No Hardball Allowed

The community garden in Denver where I learned to garden is going away. It's on the site of an old school ball field that has been sold off for development. Barb, the garden leader, saved as a memento the sign that hung on the backstop overlooking the garden: "No Hardball Allowed." This reminded me that I wrote an article about that sign a few years ago. Here it is. Thanks for reading!

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No Hardball Allowed
by John Hershey

Autumn in the garden puts me in a pensive mood. I spent countless hours out here this season, without much to show for it except a handful of radishes, a few measly wheelbarrows full of zucchini, and some tomatoes that deliberately stayed green just to spite me. As I hauled the brown remains of my lush garden to the compost pile, I began to wonder if it was really worth all the time and energy. Lost in thought, I glanced up and saw something I had never really noticed before: a rusty old sign hanging on the fence.

Our community garden is located on the site of an old elementary school ball field. The school building is hip urban lofts now, but the backstop still forms the corner of our garden. The paint is chipped and scratched, but the sign is still legible: "No hardball allowed".
I'm sure I've seen it up there before, but I never gave it a second thought, because I read it literally: The kids who played baseball here a generation ago were supposed to use a soft rubbery ball so it wouldn't hurt too much if they got beaned.

I thought about climbing up there and taking the eyesore down. But suddenly the words seemed appropriate for the garden too. Our society encourages us to play metaphorical hardball in many situations. "Playing hardball" means being tough, aggressive, competitive, and therefore successful in business, politics, or any other field. When you play hardball, you're forceful and uncompromising, relentlessly seeking the advantage for yourself.

Surely there is a place for this approach to life. Society benefits when we all try hard and do our best. Without the freedom to create and reap the benefit, we might not have so many of the things that make our lives better, like computers, medical technologies, and disposable razors with four blades, which we'll just have to make do with until a scientific breakthrough finally gives us the elusive 5-blade razor.

And just think how our nation's hardball foreign policy has allowed us to impose stability and democracy around the…

OK, forget that one. That's a bad example.

Hardball is even the name of a popular TV talk show, on which politicians and pundits yell at each other for the edification of us all.

But for all these benefits of playing hardball, we also need skills of cooperation. Sometimes everyone benefits when we work together, sharing resources and helping each other. The community garden is a place to learn these skills.

And teach them to our kids. Early this summer, my two young sons and I planted two summer squash seeds on a little mound. At the time, I might have wondered if all the hours we'd spend watering and weeding these plants, just to grow something we could get for less than a buck at the farmers' market, was the best way to spend my precious free time. Is gardening really as productive and worthwhile as other things people do on Saturdays, like playing golf, say, or watching golf on TV?
But now I realize it's not really about the food we grow. It's about working together with each other and with Mother Nature. A community garden is not just a garden for the community. It's also a community of gardeners.

I know that sounds like a bunch of touchy feely yada blah blah mumbo jumbledegook. But it's true, as this actual anecdote will illustrate. This spring, I started many kinds of seeds indoors in round peat pellets, including two kinds of basil -- the common sweet basil, and another more exotic, pointy-leafed variety.

We transplanted the seedlings in the garden, and just weeks later, we began to harvest basil leaves for homemade pesto sauce. The sweet basil pesto was familiar and delicious. But I found the other type of basil rather bland. When I mentioned this to one of my fellow community gardeners, she pointed to the yellow flowers just beginning to appear and informed me that this was in fact not basil but a tomatillo plant, the leaves of which are toxic. I guess the little pots I started the seeds in floated around in the tray and got mixed up.

Here I am trying to grow healthy food for my wife and kids, and they're lucky if I don't poison them. We're all lucky I have my fellow gardeners to protect me (and my family) from myself.

In the garden, we have a similar cooperative relationship with the earth itself. We're not trying to subdue nature and extract everything we can. Instead, we nurture the soil, making and adding compost in imitation of nature's own cycle of fertility. In this way, my boys see that our relationship with our garden plants is mutually beneficial. Right up until, you know, we pluck them from the ground and devour them.

We don't play hardball in the garden. Like the kids who played on this field long ago, we're just out here to have fun. Nobody loses, and if we water our vines we'll all get beaned.

A couple weeks later, I read the yellow squash seed packet again. It said I had to keep the strongest seedling and remove the other one. So much for being noncompetitive. Our plants were struggling to outperform each other in a life-or-death game of hardball, and I was forced into the role of umpire. My 6-year-old son Henry was heartbroken when I pulled out the extra plant. "But Dad," he said sadly, "it already had blossoms on it."

​I guess my kids are learning some lessons out here that I hadn't counted on. But the fact that he was so upset shows how much he cares for all living things. Perhaps gardening has played a role in reinforcing his natural good-heartedness. So I left the sign on the fence. "No Hardball Allowed" is still a good motto for a community garden.