play ball vs ump

play ball

verb
  • An expression used at the beginning of a game of baseball or softball. 

  • To start anything tumultuous. 

  • To work together; to cooperate. 

ump

verb
  • To act as an umpire (in). 

noun
  • An umpire. 

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