ball one's eyes out

I was alerted to the phase ball one’s eyes out  when it appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.  Checking online I found to my astonishment that there are thousands of examples of this.  Is bawl such an unusual word now that we choose to substitute ball as more familiar?  Have we changed the image behind the phrase from a person making animal sounds while weeping, to someone rubbing their knuckles in their eyeballs?

 The word bawl  is thought to be from the Medieval Latin baulare  to bark like a dog, so applying it to a human being indicates a degree of disgust.   A small child screaming or an adult weeping in a noisy and unrestrained fashion was said to be bawling.  The more common meaning of bawl out  was ‘to shout out’. This has become in American English the verb bawl out  meaning ‘to reprimand’, as in The boss is going to bawl you out for being late. This has, since the early 1900s, been just as commonly spelled ball out. Perhaps that is influencing ball one’s eyes out.