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• n  a no-nonsense attitude in business or politics
  they play hardball in the Senate
• n  baseball as distinguished from softball

• According to news reports, one of the Los Angeles policemen accused in the videotaped beating of Rodney King taunted him at the hospital by jeering, "We played a little hardball .
• Jack the Unlikely Ripper Kemp plays hardball .
• You have to play hardball with guys who only understand hardball.

• softball

News & Articles

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• Tracking each team’s ticket surcharges
  Chris Jaffe of The Hardball Times has his annual look at teams’ ticket surcharges — convenience fees, printing fees, processing fees, whatever — up today, helping you figure out how much you’re really paying for a ducat to each game. It’s a handy post which tells you — after it’s all said and done —…
  June 10, 2013 - NBC Sports: HardballTalk
• Friday Ratings: CNN’s Blitzer Beats MSNBC’s Matthews And Sharpton In Demo And Total Viewers
  Friday night from 5-7pm ET, CNN's two-hour block of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer beat MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton in both the 25-54 demo and total viewers.
  June 10, 2013 - Mediaite
• Dyche Opinion | McConnell: A Half-Century of Hardball Politics
  Mitch McConnell has been playing political hardball since he was a college student fifty years ago.
  June 7, 2013 - FOX 41 Louisville

Quotes

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• Jim McGovern in FOXNews
  What I don't want to do is get on this merry-go-round where we try to end this war and negotiate it down to a blank check,said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. "It's time to play hardball."
• John Sweeney in International Herald Tribune
  We do not plan to let a hardball campaign from Big Business derail the Employee Free Choice Act or the dreams of workers,Sweeney said.
• Alina Mungiu-Pippidi in International Herald Tribune
  Everybody is going to play hardball so we may see a lot of instability ahead,said Alina Mungiu-Pippidi of the Romanian Academic Society think tank.