You know the feeling. As with most days, you've taken numerous breaks from work to check your email. Each time has been a disappointment. When it hasn't been "0 unread," it's been another message from Classmates.com (apparently unaware that Facebook has rendered it obsolete) or some newsletter you keep forgetting to unsubscribe to. But then, finally, comes the one you've been waiting for. An email from Yahoo! Sports. Undoubtedly a response or counter offer to one of your recent trade proposals. Might you be upgrading your second center spot? Boosting your blocks? Could this be the move that turns your season around? You take your fingers off the Alt and Tab keys, instantly forget about the question your boss just sent you, and open the email as if it was a Christmas present. But what's inside is worse than a pair of knitted mittens; it's an astoundingly absurd offer that a drunk grandmother from Turkmenistan would scoff at. Two failed waiver-wire pickups for your top two players. Something along the lines of Jason Thompson and Josh Howard for Manu Ginobili and Dorell Wright. Faster than a Brandon Jennings crossover, you go from excited to disgusted.What is in the brain of someone who takes time out of their life to submit such a futile offer? Whatever it is would make for a fascinating psychological study. Were they just hoping to catch you in an extraordinarily debilitated mental state? Like after you'd just chugged a scorpion bowl and been flung down a flight of stairs by a bouncer? Were they hoping you'd be in an historically generous mood...as if you'd just left confession, and the priest told you to say 10 Hail Marys and give your two best players to the first person who asks for them? Were they hoping you'd have a seizure at the exact moment you opened the trade and accidentally click the Accept button due to an involuntary muscle spasm? Did it occur to them that, even if by some ludicrous miracle you did agree to the deal, the odds of the league allowing it would be worse than those for The Tooth Fairy winning Best Picture?
I don't know about you, but receiving such an offer makes me physically angry. Like if this happened to me when I was in third grade, I would have found the schmuck at recess, put him in a headlock and made him lick some ABC gum on the blacktop. But unfortunately it's not third grade. So what recourse do we victims of this unrecognized form of harassment have? Well, here are some options:
- Send a nasty reply. "Know how I know you're a fantasy league fish? You make worse offers than Pepe Le Pew."
- Make an even more absurd counter reply. If you have room on your roster, pick up Allen Iverson and offer him up for the dude's top five players.
- Insult him on the league message board. "Anyone interested in trading their iPhone for a beeper? How about a Lexus LFA for a Yaris? If so, contact Dave "Amateur Hour" Jones. He offered to take Ginobili and Wright off my hands for an Obama Chia and a boot warmer."
Those ideas may bring you some temporary satisfaction, but I'd like to see fantasy sports systems offer more creative ways of dealing with lame offer perpetrators. Perhaps some of the following ideas would be effective:
- A button for reporting "trade spam." If an owner gets reported by three other owners, he is blocked from trading for a month.
- A rule that allows the bad offer recipient to rename the bad offer sender's team, if the league commissioner deems the offer totally outrageous. "The Amateur Hours," "Bieber Fever," or "Kutcher Man Crush" would make decent candidates.
- An "absurd trade offer" alert that goes out to all owners when an offensive trade is reported. "WARNING ALL OWNERS! PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT KUTCHER MAN CRUSH HAS REPORTEDLY BEEN MAKING OBNOXIOUSLY STUPID TRADE PROPOSALS. BE SURE TO EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN DEALING WITH KUTCHER MAN CRUSH."
If you have more ideas, please let me know. It's time we fight back against outlandish trade proposals!
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