grandstand play

1. In sports, any excessively showy action or maneuver during play done primarily to impress or entertain the spectators. Originally specific to baseball, it has since been extended to any sport. Rather than shoot the ball and secure an easy two points for the team, she instead attempted to slam dunk the ball as a grandstand play for the crowd. If you're going to attempt a grandstand play, you better be able to pull it off—otherwise, you'll look like a fool. A: "I don't think Coach was impressed with your little pirouette move there." B: "I'm not looking for grandstand plays here, Bukowski! Just put the puck in the net any way you can!"

2. By extension, any excessively dramatic, showy, or ostentatious action, behavior, or maneuver. Our manager is more concerned with making a grandstand play for the CEO than effectively running the office. The dictator's constant threats of war are more of a grandstand play than a legitimate concern to the rest of the world. Sounds like the suspect took hostages as a grandstand play so law enforcement would take him seriously.

grandstand play

n. something done exceedingly well to impress an audience or a group of spectators. The grandstand play caught the attention of the crowd just as they were leaving.

grandstand play

An ostentatious action; behavior designed to attract maximum attention. The term comes from nineteenth-century American baseball, where certain players deliberately sought the attention and favor of the spectators in the grandstands. It appeared in one of W. K. Post’s Harvard Stories of 1893: “They all hold on to something. . . . To faint or fall over would be a grand-stand play.”