The league was called Spiced Lamb Shank.
By November, the draft confusion was over and the trade emails had taken its place. ESPN sent a confirmation when two teams accepted a deal. The subject did not say anything about football. It just said a trade had been accepted.
The team names were the real entertainment. Horse Chokers. Sweet Lincoln's Mullet. Mustache Ride. The Teddy Ginn Junior Family. Mine was not subtle either.
This was not serious sport, but the group took the logistics seriously. There were keeper announcements, draft lotteries, time-zone corrections, trade proposals, and reminders. We had created a small bureaucracy around watching football and insulting one another.
These were also the people in the rest of the inbox. The same names appeared on utility spreadsheets, camping invitations, housewarming parties, car listings, and random links sent late at night. Fantasy football was one more thread holding the group together.
The league kept going after the draft because ESPN kept turning every decision into an email. A proposed trade created one message. An accepted trade created another. Nobody had to remember to tell the rest of the group what happened; the software did it for us.
Work at Beatport was constant and technical. The league was neither. It was a reason to keep talking about something that did not involve storage capacity or whether a server was healthy.
I cannot rebuild the standings from this one message. I can confirm the trade and the league. That is enough for now.
Spiced Lamb Shank was still alive in November.
That may be the most responsible conclusion available from a fantasy-football trade notification.