play ball

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

play ball (third-person singular simple present plays ball, present participle playing ball, simple past and past participle played ball)

1. (idiomatic) To start anything tumultuous.
2. (idiomatic) To work together; to cooperate.

   The politicians refused to play ball with the journalists.

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

     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.

   • 2019 January 9, Drachinifel, 15:17 from the start, in The Channel Dash / Operation Cerberus - How to win through refuge in audacity‎^[1], archived from the original on 24 July 2022:

     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.

3. (baseball, softball) An expression used at the beginning of a game of baseball or softball.

• if there's grass on the field, play ball
• if there's grass on the pitch, play ball