begin vs open the ball

begin

verb
  • To start, to initiate or take the first step into something. 

  • To come into existence. 

  • To be in the first stage of some situation 

noun
  • Beginning; start. 

open the ball

verb
  • To begin operations; to set things in motion. 

How often have the words begin and open the ball occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )