“To drop the ball,” to be guilty of a major oversight, to make a significant mistake. Usage note: This expression, used often in the investment banking world, is similar in meaning to “fall asleep at the wheel (or switch),” which will be the subject of a future FEotD post. However, today’s phrase is more effective because bankers respond so passionately to that good jock talk. It must be noted that one risks career suicide by using this expression about someone higher than you in the investment banking hierarchy. An associate, chagrined after a tongue-lashing from a senior VP on the “deal team” (another future FEotD) and in a moment of weakness, might confess to his office-mates (occupying a tiny, three-person internal closet with no windows), “Yeah, I really dropped the ball on that one, the global map of company operations in the pitchbook shades a little bit too much of Rhode Island.”
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