Wanna trade?

Rick and I caused a bit of a hullabaloo this weekend (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “hullabaloo”… probably for good reason…) when we traded some players in our fantasy baseball league. When you want to trade players with someone, you go to the league website, choose the players you want to trade and the players you want in return, and send the trade offer to your trading partner. As soon as your partner accepts the trade, an email is sent to everyone in the league to inform them of the pending trade, and it also appears as a “trade pending” on the league home page. Everyone then has 24 hours to review the trade, and decide if it’s fair or not. If, for instance, I were to try to trade David Ortiz – the purveyor of many, many points – for some rookie player on the Pittsburg Pirates who’s batting .125, well, that would be pretty unfair. And if anyone thinks a certain trade is unfair, they can veto the trade. Five vetoes, and the trade gets shot down.

And Rick and I had been talking for weeks about how we should think about a trade – his team has been lacking in offense, and I have the best offense in the league. My team has been lacking in pitching, and Rick has one of the best pitching averages in the league (it was THE best, but today it looks like second-best…). It would make perfect sense for me to trade him some offense for some pitching. So we came up with a nice little trade – two of my best outfielders for a decent starting pitcher and Mariano Rivera (the Yankee closer). We threw in a few “filler” players to close in the gaps, sent the trade out into cyberspace, and waited to hear the comments from the guys in the league. But to our surprise, no one said a thing – and after 24 hours, our trade went through, and I promptly accrued a 14-point save from my newly-acquired closer Rivera (Rivera rocks!).

So imagine our surprise when a guy I’ll simply call “The Feline Menace” (that’s his professional wrestling name…) sent out an email to the league yesterday morning, complaining about how “unfair” our trade had been. Not only because he apparently thought the players were mismatched in my favor, but also because we’d conducted the trade on a weekend. And apparently not everyone checks their email on weekends. And I just have to ask – who doesn’t check their email on weekends? This is 2006 – you can get email sent to your cell phone… you can get wireless internet access in McDonald’s… you can probably check your email from a kiosk in a bathroom in a 7-11 somewhere. I would think it’s next to impossible NOT to check your email every day. You’d have to run off to the Appalachian Mountains and live with a group of new-age hippie backpackers to have any chance of getting away from technology.

But even if some member of the fantasy baseball league DOESN’T check email on weekends, it’s usually necessary to log on to the league website every day to make sure your roster is set correctly for that day’s games. And as I said, any pending trade is right there on the home page. Whether you trade on a weekend or not is of no consequence – it’s really the responsibility of each member of the league to pay attention to those kinds of things.

But I think the thing that bothered me the most about the email sent out by The Feline Menace was his implication that since Rick and I are married, we have TWO chances to win money, whereas all those other poor guys only have ONE chance. And this is just not true. If I win any money, I plan on keeping it for myself – I’m sure I’ll be buying shoes and, um, earrings, and probably leather bags, and uh, oh, let’s say perfume. Yeah. And if Rick wins any money, I fully expect him to spend that money on HIMSELF – he can go out and buy some electronic doohickies if he wants. It’d be fine with me. So to say that we have “two” chances to win money is absolutely ridiculous. Unless Rick wants to go shopping at Sephora, or if I want to peruse the aisles of Best Buy. It’s just a little silly fantasy baseball money – it’s not like winning the lottery or anything.

And as I’ve said before – I’m not in this for the money, anyway. I’m in it for the principle. And the shoes. Definitely the shoes…