hardball vs softball game

hardball

noun
  • Tough or ruthless behavior, especially in combat, politics or business. 

  • In baseball, a type of ball and baseball game, as opposed to softball. 

verb
  • To exhibit tough and ruthless behavior towards. 

adj
  • Being or exhibiting tough or ruthless behavior, especially in combat, politics or business. 

softball game

How often have the words hardball and softball game occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )