bat around

There’s something sort of dutiful about the show’s sociopolitical humor, such as it is, which exists more to give the characters something to bat around than to say anything substantial about How We Ought to Live Now.

Paul Katool, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, is part of a group of employees who bat around ideas every month for funny highway signs, riffing on movies, pop music and upcoming holidays.

Kirchoff didn’t allow Maine’s 14-player order to bat around a second time, retiring all except one, a hit allowed in the third inning.

On behalf of us old guys who still read the printed newspaper, is the person who decided to stop publishing box scores, standings and “traditional game stories” in The Times Sports page one of those people who go to a ballgame to do the wave and bat around a beach ball?

"We got rid of the tag of being the guy you bat around or bat through. I think that maybe hung over his head a little bit too much and didn't allow him to be the player that he can be," Fleming told the media.