Well it Bel, bat, batting, batting works for that stuff you do with a balls, in sports arenas.. but since i am not a sports fan, when i first read it-- i was puzzled-- and a quick glance and M-W 10th didn't help--since it only gives bat/batting as some thing done in a ball field (or seperately as an mammal)
(tsuwm-- oh, wondererous one with the OED handy, please help on this!)
to me Bat is a roll of wool-- and batting is a soft mat of wool (well, acutally now, poly fil, though i do have 1 wool quilt). It is the stuff that gets stuffed into the middle of a quilt! and it never gets made into a verb-- one never bats a quilt with batting-- and quilts are never batting! (but they do contain batting)
you begin to see just how strange i am-- a three letter word, taught in a primer- and i get it wrong-- or at least different! i am sure that i learned bat (as in baseball bat) first, and later at some point in my life bat (as in a roll of wool) later became the primary defination.
