play ball

present singular third person plays ball · participle present playing ball · participle past played ball · past played ball

1. idiomaticTo start anything tumultuous.
2. idiomaticTo work together; to cooperate.

   The politicians refused to play ball with the journalists.

   2 more examples

   Donohue also promised Kopacz he'd help him out of his numerous legal problems in several stales if K. would play ball with Mass. cops and agree to implicate Roger Spear and Mark Davis as malefactors in Barbre's death.

   1981 April 11, Philip Shehadi, “Dutch Gays Come To NY, Protest Immigration Laws”, in Gay Community News, page 4

   The Luftwaffe, at this point, was still refusing to play ball completely, however. But someone decided to lump Adolf Galland with command of the air operation, and he decided to work with Luftflotte 3, mobilizing their training units to make up the numbers, since large numbers of that particular formation's fighters had been diverted to the campaign in Russia, which was why the fighter numbers were so much lower than they had been the previous year.

   2019 January 9, Drachinifel, 15:17 from the start, in The Channel Dash / Operation Cerberus - How to win through refuge in audacity, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2022

3. ball gamesAn expression used at the beginning of a game of baseball or softball.