leave everything on the field
v. phr.— «First he held forth at length the press conference for long stretches, then spent three solid hours that evening at the CBS party at the Rose Bowl, glad-handing critics on the stadium turf and talking a mile a minute into their tape recorders, sometimes hammy, sometimes deadly serious. As they say in sports, he left everything on the field.» —“Woods sells the goods” in Pasadena, California Kansas City Star (Missouri, Kansas) July 17, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In 1916, a small-town newspaper in Pennsylvania printed a fanciful item about a local gathering with a guest list that included, among others, Miss Ella Vader, Mr. Ray Zor, and other punny names. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
When a teenager went a week without talking as part of a school project, he noticed a surprising side effect: Instead of rehearsing a response to what other people were saying to him, he was focused on listening — and feeling smarter as a result...