Billy Cundiff and Kyle Williams I’m sure had visions of winning the big one, just waiting when their number was called and suddenly it was time to live that scenario in real life. For Billy Cundiff, a place kicker for the Baltimore Ravens was asked to do something that for most from 32 yards was something he clearly exceeded during pre-game warm-ups but coach Harbaugh didn’t want to take the chance of putting Cundiff in a long FG situation so Joe Flacco moved the ball down field putting Cundiff in a virtual gimme FG from 32 yards away to send the game into OT. What did Cundiff do, he missed wide right, and when I say WIDE I mean he wasn’t even remotely close, he missed it miserably. Some blame Lee Evans for no catching that pass in the end zone while in coverage to simply end the game, but the video clearly showed the ball was stripped no sooner than it went into his grasp and he did not get his second foot down. So Cudiff, vying for the tie wasn’t able to deliver by doing the one job he was paid to do and paid handsomely to boot (no pun intended).  

As I’ve said in previous comments this week, watching HBO Hard Knocks over the last few seasons the place kickers are only considered second class citizens, not required to study play books, they spend a minimum time in the weight room and during games they wait and wait for the chance to kick an extra point or a FG from as much as 50 yards. At 32 yards this was a no brainer or as so the entire planet had thought. He later claimed of chaos on the sidelines when the scoreboard had shown it was third down and when going into kick the FG he said the chaos was still making them hurry. If this was his only excuse it’s not really an excuse being he only had to call a timeout, Belichick saw this chaos and like most great coaches who ice kickers he felt that this very chaos was best left for the Ravens to deal with and they stood pat. The snap was good, the ball threads were rotated and the next thing you know it was so wide left it became a sideline souvenir!

Kyle Williams, who most feel deserves the tag team nod for this week’s Gold Plunger, I hear you and for his inability to carry a football on a professional level to keep it from being yanked away in the same fashion a homeless person would yank away a loaf of day old French bread, I have no problem whatsoever to give him the honorable mention here. But in the grand scheme of things Cundiff blew the low percentage boot, Williams was stripped by his inability to remember the basic fundamentals on tucking the ball to his chest, not juggling it from hand to hand as he tried to avoid the defense from bringing him down and trying to get the ball out o his hands late in the game.

Both of these guys cost their teams big, and in the locker room the politically correct statements were flying around on how it was a team loss, but the facial expressions on the sidelines for both the Ravens and the 49ers not to mention their fandom were worth a 1,000 words…What they said in front of a microphone I'm sure was not was said when they spoke to each other in small groups...with the game close to being in the bag for the 49ers I find it tough to believe they're all fine with carrying around the label of a team loss.

The Gab is sending Stickum to Williams to aid him in keeping the ball in his hands and Cundiff wll be getting a GPS used on measuring the distance for drives and shots on the golf course, this just might help with him lining up shots from here on out when he finds himself in the CFL kicking FG’s and kickoffs for the Toronto Argonauts or one of those other Canadian teams that tend to fill their rosters with the NFL’s has-beens!

I don’t think there’s much argument who the TOTW is this week, not when this particular Tool forgot the very first rule of captaining a boat and that is, the captain goes down with the ship…or as Bill Maher said Friday night, “I’m not saying the guy should have gone down with the ship, but he at least should have gotten wet”!!! Yeah Bill, you’re right. Instead he tripped and fell into a life boat…how convenient.

There are a lot of things wrong with this story, like what the hell Captain Francesco Schettino was thinking  when he moved the 1,000 foot ship so close to the coast of the island of Giglio, Italy? The story we’ve heard was he was bringing it in closer for crew member’s to wave to friends and family…that makes it right, let’s risk over 4,200 lives because we want to show off. And he also claims that the rocks that tore a tennis court size hole in the hull of the ship weren’t on his charts. That comment is coming back to bite him in the ass, because not only have they been shown on charts, CNN put up a satellite photo that clearly showed these same rocks. I’m no expert but if you can see rocks from space I’m willing to bet you can see them from the bridge of a cruise ship.

It’s not going to matter what defense Schettino uses, his actions of leaving the bridge and having to be ordered back to the crippled vessel by a coast guard official where Schettino’s ire was drawn because he wasn’t being called CAPTAIN, demonstrate just how much this guy should probably never have been at the helm of this ship to begin with. He broke virtually every rule of seamanship and these actions are going to bring numerous lawsuits on Carnival and undoubtedly a long jail sentence for our newly crowned TOOL OF THE WEEK!

The Tag Team partner for our TOTW is my former roommate who just so happens to be trying to push my buttons. He thinks he’s a really creative smart ass too, like by signing up for the Gab twice in less than 45 minutes under 2 different accounts and placing comments in a few blogs. What made it easy to know it was him was we’re able to tell where it is people signup from, we see IP addresses and that IP address is now locked from joining. Let me tell you a few things about this loser, I think you all are probably going to think most of this is untrue but it is balls-on accurate.

One night we’re drinking a couple of beers and he says, I’d probably need to drink at least another six pack before I’d normally tell anyone this, but I haven’t been laid in a really long time. Let me make one thing clear, I NEVER ASKED, he just tossed that out there. It turns out that a really long time is over 10 years and this includes paying for it. This guy is such a loser he actually went into Barnes and Noble and purchased those “How to Pick Up Women” books, he has 3-4 in plain view in the living room. Imagine the looks that got him at the checkout line. His nephew who used to live with him and is about 15 years his junior was one of three friends he had including me and this other tool from NY, but in less than two months all three of us stopped having any association with him whatsoever. His nephew wants nothing to do with him, and the other guy reported him to the Dallas Ga. PD for sending him text messages stating he was going to shoot the black neighbor if he even so much as stepped in his yard – that was over a barking dog originally…that made its way around his neighborhood in record time.  

When he isn’t sleeping for 18 hours straight he’s up playing with his 3 birds. He has birds because they’re the only living thing that can tolerate this social moron’s existence. He paid about a grand each for two in about a month’s time but they both came to quick demises. He flicked the head of one because he said it nipped him, it fell to the bottom of the cage and seized out and died, he cried like a bitch over it, then he replaced that one and kept it in his bed when he slept, yeah he slept with the bird. Bird shit on the pillows, on his clothes, his sheets…really nice eh? This lasted a week or so until he tells me he rolled over on top if and squished it. I was so stunned, we all know birds to be like other household pets that normally sleep on the foot of the bed, right? Idiot!

This is the kind of guy that if you went to a party and there were 50 people there and you found yourself talking to him you’d be looking for a way to get to the other side of the room in a hurry and dodging him the rest of the night. To say he has the personality of a lima bean would be understating this.

Now to my favorite story; I came back to the house on Halloween night, he’s standing there with a bandana on his head and a bird on his shoulder trying to appear pirate-like while one of the pharmacy techs and her husband are sitting on the couch, I go upstairs to catch the hockey game. A short time later they leave and he comes upstairs and says “had a nice time hanging with Marie and her husband”…I say that’s fine and try to pay attention to the game and I had my back towards him and then he starts in with this – “so Marie asks me if I keep the bird on my shoulder the whole time I’m home and I told her sure, I walk around with him, watch TV with him, I even keep him on my shoulder while I’m on the computer”! He keeps rambling on and then he tells me that in front of her husband he said “ I even let him sit there while I jerk off” (he’s the only person I know of that has actually purchased access to porn sites on the web, he even had his credit card frozen when he joined one after I moved in)…now he’s got my attention. I turned around, looked him right in the face and asked “DID YOU REALLY SAY THAT IN FRONT OF HER HUSBAND”? His response was “sure, what’s the big deal”? (this guy wonders why he hasn’t been laid in over 10 years, Jesus) I say “Geez dude, there’s so many things wrong with that, but here’s just a couple; you work with this gal, she’s a woman, there’s about 6 women that work in the pharmacy with her and woman talk, he tells me she won’t say anything. BWAHAHAHAHA…this gem must have been from his vast experience with woman, ya think? I followed that with, “ and just because everyone does it, doesn’t mean you should be going around broadcasting it to everyone, especially people you work with, or saying it to a woman with her husband right there, I don't think he appreciated that too much”. Embarrassing for them? How would he know, the guy is a fucking mental moron.

Now I ask all of you since he seemed to think that I made more of a deal out of this than was necessary, who was right here? Was I right to point out that this would have probably been a little more information than anyone needed to know, particularly a woman who he works with, or do you think it was more than okay for her and her husband to made privy into his world where he and his left hand are intimate? I’m just asking. Keep in mind this guy fills prescriptions in a pharmacy that’s in a large retail store. Like I said, the guy is a social moron.

So there you have a glimpse into the life of one lonely, friendless, womanless douche bag. For any of you that saw my recent Facebook status this isn’t my response to my buttons being pushed, that response is one he’s never going to forget. Maybe if he had taken my advice to back off he wouldn’t find himself in the world of shit he’s in and he also wouldn’t be sharing Tool of the Week with the skipper of the Minnow!

This Tool of the Year is unlike anything I’ve ever written prior, hardly a year that I’ve done this where there wasn’t a standout for whatever reason, Clemens and the steroid allegations comes to mind and he was a two time winner of the TOTY Award, but this isn’t about sport, this is about using a position in sports for the most disgusting, illicit and heinous motives that is imaginable. The story of Jerry Sandusky that took over the airwaves 24/7 and brought one of the most respected college football programs to its knees overnight and in less than a week, there were arrests, resignations and then the firing of the then beloved and now somewhat ostracized  Joe Paterno. The campus wasted no time in removing the caricature of Sandusky seated on the left side in what is now an empty chair, this university just couldn’t distant itself from this guy quick enough. But let’s face facts, the horrors that turned up in the 15 page grand jury indictment will linger for a long time to come, and for the victims this coward will not take a plea deal and his attorney who seems to be as much of a joke as Clemens mouth piece Rusty Hardin, will demean these victims under cross examination and when the evidence is done being presented and this sleaze is found guilty he’ll stand there in denial acting like a scapegoat or victim never having the balls to admit what he did to these young boys under the ruse of a charity for underprivileged kids.

We're hearing more and more about this type of behavior among coaches, along with Sandusky is Bernie Fine an assistant coach at Syracuse, but there's another coach who had his way with kids long before these two tools surfaced, Graham James who was convicted of the same despicable acts in Canada having abused pro hockey player Sheldon Kennedy (there are rumors Joe Sakic was a victim but he never confirmed it) while playing in the junior leagues. James too manipulated their careers as he moved from team to team to keep them close. In junior hockey it’s not uncommon for teenage players to live in other parts of the country with host families while they’re developing for supplemental drafts. James served prison time but was recently pardoned April 4, 2010. To say there was outrage is an understatement, and prior to his release Theo Fleury another former NHL player penned an autobiography about his years of abuse at the hands of James and his tough upbringing, this lead to nine charges in Winnipeg and when James flew to Toronto October 25, 2010 he was arrested at the airport. In December of 2011 James plead guilty to these new charges and will be sentenced again to prison in February. When these scum bags are done with the abuse they leave these poor souls broken, they have substance abuse issues, they have difficult times with relationships and they live with a terrible secret that eventually breaks them. To me Sheldon Kennedy is a hero, a former Boston Bruin with a bright future who finally couldn’t take it anymore and went public, his hockey career ended shortly afterward but he has dedicated his life to publicly speaking on abuse, the signs to watch for, to encourage kids to step up right away and report the abuse.

What Sandusky has done and I say done because I read that indictment, these kids, all listed as victims number 1, 2 etc all had the same things to say when referring to how Sandusky approached them, the things he said, the buzz words, like “horse play”, or “bear hugs”, yeah normal words you’d use when showering and sexually assaulting a 10 year old. He was even confronted years prior by a mother who had complained when her son came home with wet hair and he explained he had to shower in the Penn state locker room after “working out” with this pedophile. He says in a recording he wished he was dead, but years later forgets this ever taking place…yeah right. We all know there’s no punishment good enough for a pedophile, especially one who used kids that had already come from tough times and this piece of shit used their lack of a father figure to satisfy his sick whims. All we can hope for is that his sentence is so long he rots in prison until they wheel him out to drop him in the hole. Personally I’d like to place a live wire up his ass and leave the switch turned on until he’s well done! 

Since I can’t personally carry out the sentence I’ll do the next best thing with his Tool of the year award. Sandusky will be getting the Golden Plunger by Binford,  but he’s getting a custom designed version, a one of kind Plunger with gold barbed wire wrapped around the handle and the person who will present this to him is going to be his new cell mate once he’s sentenced. It will be sent overnight to the prison facility, I’ll pay off a guard or two to be sure it gets in and then his new “roomie” will proceed to clean his plumbing (no pun intended) with the Tool of the Year Award! Hopefully we’ll get some pictures of his facial expression, no doubt these will be pleasing to the eye and quite satisfying to all of us here at the Gab!

On a side note, to show much this guy is in denial and how bad a liar he is you’ve got to watch this video from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, not only did Bob Costas do a fantastic job with less than 30 minutes notice that he’d get the interview when it was offered by his original guest, Sandusky’s lawyer Joe Amendola, but Stewart picks apart just like we all probably did when we watched it live, of course Stewart’s description is hilarious to boot!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-15-2011/jerry-sandusky-phone-interview

Even though I could write a TOTW on this guy I wouldn't waste Gab space on this douche bag. But that still leaves us in need for a candidate for Tool of the Year (he qualifies for this as well), I think we're going through the motions here with nominees because I think we're all thinking along the same lines as for who is the front runner here, or one of the two front runner, co-defendants as it were. But I've still got to give you the chance to chime in so you know what it is you've got to do, but I know where I'm putting my money!

Happy New Year to you all!

Sully

Who will it be? We will see.
 

I never imagined that when I was starting Tool of the Week back up that so many tools would be overtaken by the Tool Box that is Penn State. It’s like where do we even begin? We could start with the main culprit Jerry Sandusky. This guy starts a charity for his own personal harem of young boys to pick and choose from. Then some of these kids had “sleepovers” at his house in a bedroom in the basement. I’ve asked myself numerous times how it is that his wife or kids never thought that something might be a little suspicious about his desire to “choose” a special boy to garner this extra privilege while others went back to their fatherless homes. Most of whom I discussed this with came up with the same scenario, that the wife was probably in denial, enjoying the life he had built for her as a Penn State coach and how until the word broke that he was a pedophile (alleged pedophile, until you heard his call-in with Bob Costas) they were treated like royalty in college Park.

Another Tool we could talk about is Joe Paterno, we all know how he came to be fired and the school was tipped upside down over his dismissal by a large group of students who obviously have their priorities a bit fucked up when they’re more concerned with their football coach than the victims. Paterno even claimed he should have done more when it was clear the university was turning a blind eye but how long does anyone have to wait to see that nothing has been done, a week, a month or a year? No, something along a cover-up within the “ole Boy network” was at play here. Even the university police don’t’ have any files going back to ’99 when Sandusky reportedly was caught by a mother when her son returned home with wet hair and told her that he had to shower in the locker room with Sandusky. To hear Sandusky tell it he never said to her he wish he were dead even though the phone call was listened in on by authorities yet he managed to walk away without a charge.

The list of Tools is merely touched on here, the list is endless with more undoubtedly to be named as well as victims we’ve yet to hear about. It’s going to get a lot nastier, the civil suits will follow but what Felber and I had discussed was the timeframe we’re looking at before the headlines read “Sandusky Wraps Lips Around the Business End of a Shotgun”! Our over/under is 6 weeks!

So I'm going to go back to the method I used in the beginning, I'll post a nomination blog and when nominations are closed I'll take the one with the most votes and hand them the coveted trophy (or place it in an orifice of their anatomy depending on just how bad their behavior was) in grand style.

So let's get this started - please take a minute to jot down who it is that you feel is worthy to be recognized as the Yougabsports Tool of the Week. I'll post the winner on Monday!

At the end of the year I'll ask you to look back over the last 12 months and nominate who you believe should be on the Mt. Rushmore of Tools. For some reason I think nominations for TOTY will be unanimous because as of now no one seems to stand out over the one I've got in mind, but we'll see if we're all on the same page when the time comes!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Sully

This week was a slow sports week in terms of TOTW nominees. As Jeff02 had said, he was kind of surprised that K-Rod didn’t get the nod for pounding on his girlfriends father. Then I had chimed back about the Corey Pavin-Jim Gray story that seemed to take over the PGA Championship. I have no reason to believe that Corey Pavin would have any reason to lie about the fact that Tiger Woods would probably be a top choice for the Ryder Cup team, but Gray’s contention that Pavin had told him he’d make Wood’s a wild card pick even before the Woods played out the event seems to be a bit out of character for Pavin. Meanwhile, during a heated exchange where Gray apparently poked his finger in Pavin’s chest stating he was “going down” Lisa Pavin waved her cell phone at Gray and told him it’s all right here, meaning she recorded the entire exchange. Gray has a lot of credibility issues. I’m still having a lot of trouble with this douche bag even having a press pass after the 60 minute “LeBron Infomercial”, which he was reportedly paid 6 figures to read from a script. Better known for calling out Pete Rose in the All-Star game over cheating, Gray has had always seemed to find a way to become the story rather than report it. Gray gets an honorable mention from me this week, he’s fucking tool, has been and always will be. Hey Jim, shut the fuck up!!!

Now it may be slow, but that also doesn’t mean we aren’t surrounded by Tools, we’ve had our fair share of fans recently that have walked away with the Plunger right between the yes and this week will be no different. Bo Wyble (that name is more than fitting isn’t it?) and his girlfriend Sara Saco-Vertiz attended the Astro’s – Braves game in Houston this week and took seats along the left field corner wall, it turns out these weren’t even their seats they moved up to them. Once seated Sara tells Bo - “baby, we’re going to get hit”! Bo replies in typical male bravado, “I’ll catch it if it comes this way”. I think it’s safe to say this is the answer most guys would give, I mean let’s face it, you don’t want to let your gal think you have no sac right? Well sure enough a foul ball comes directly to towards Bo and Sara and this is where Bo can flex his muscle and impress the hell out of the little blonde cutie, but what does he do? He sure as hell doesn’t make the gallant effort we’ve seen 60 year old women make at the ball game, he darts out of the way leaving Sara all alone and the ball plunks her right in the arm. You can even see where she tells this dolt, “I told you we were going to get hit! Poor Bo…Bo knows humiliation, he also has a new moniker, “The Bailer”!

You’d think things couldn’t get much worse for Bo but you’d be wrong! The pair ended up on the Early Show with Harry Smith two days later and Bo sits there and gets ripped a new one by good ole Harry! Asked if he had a brain aneurysm at the moment when he could have been a hero, Bo just kind of sits there, sure now he stays put. At the conclusion of the interview Smith asks how they’re doing, if they’re still together, and after a few umms, and an uncomfortable glare at Bo, Sara states they’re no longer together, but it didn’t have anything to do with this event. Sure, I’ll buy that when I grow hair on my palms. It certainly didn’t help his cause any that he looked like a candy ass, you’d think from watching the video that he was in Iraq and someone had just shouted “INCOMING”!!! I’m sure that Sara was not only a little embarrassed by the event, but gave some serious thought to how much he must have cared about her being he saved his own ass and left her to fend for herself, and I can see that. As for his reaction to the foul ball, I’ve never been to a ball game or watched it on TV where fouls balls are avoided, the normal move is to go towards the ball and get the souvenir. Bo doesn’t know much about baseball either I guess.

So he lost a souvenir, he lost a chance to impress his girlfriend by catching the ball that would have basically landed in his lap and in the end he lost the girl too! But don’t fret Bo, we here at the Gab have a special place in our heart for guys with no balls whatsoever, it’s called the Tool of the Week! Here, catch!

Get them in and check back here on Saturday for another edition of the YGS Tool of the Week!

As I said to Beeze last night, the icing on the cake wasn’t the live decision that he wasn’t going back to the Cavs, if he was staying there he would’ve done his press conference at half court of the Quicken Loans Arena, not a neutral site where they don’t even have pro basketball, or a pro team of any nature to begin with. However, it is a stone’s throw away from Bristol, HQ of ESPiN who has been a non-stop, 24 hour ad agency that most companies have to pay through the ass to get. What does a Super Bowl 30 second spot run for now? Think about how much time they spent on James and it’ll tell you how much he saved, or rather duped out of that organization. And what’s with an hour special prior to the announcement? Is there that little going on in the world of sports that it warranted giving James virtually an entire evening of coverage on their flagship station? All this network did was feed this beast’s ego more, if that was even possible. Just when we thought we’ve seen it all with the likes of Brett Favre and his never ending waffling and holding team’s hostage, James has taken it to a whole new level and now the possibilities are endless when the next egomaniac has to reach some sort of decision on his or her future.

As this soap opera, “As the Stomach Turns” progressed, the Cavaliers weren’t going to sit idly by and let James keep the spotlight without getting in their parting shot. I’ll give Dan Gilbert an A for effort and another for having the berries to say what most have danced around. Although I think he’s overly optimistic guaranteeing Cleveland fans they’ll win a championship there before James does in Miami. What does he know that we don’t? But that letter buried James in every sense of the word, even more so since it wasn’t written by someone in the media but his former boss. I’ve read it about 5 times because of the ire you can feel by Gilbert while penning it, and rest assured, no staffer typed that up, that was spoken from the heart of a man who gave a teen everything only to have it thrown back in his face. The hometown boy has gone bad, become more than greedy,  now he’s also put himself in a situation where he has no room for error. He may be basking in the glow of the spotlight now, but if Miami  doesn’t win a championship next year all the critics, including his ass-kisser’s at ESPiN will have no choice but to ask what went wrong, this was supposed to be a lock, then again it was supposed to be a lock this season too. Will it be a locker room tiff, will one ego get in the way of another? Will Dwayne Wade get sick of playing second fiddle to the newcomer’s? There’s potential for disaster when you put this many ego’s together in one place, especially on a basketball team. Until James wins a championship he’s going to be dogged by this move. Unlike Dan Marino and Jim Kelly, both who never won championships and still hear about it to this day, both remain class acts who went down with their ships from the start of their career’s to the day they retired. James won’t have that if he wins it in Miami, he’ll be dogged for going to where his chances improved, something Kobe didn’t have to do nor Michael Jordan. That’s why I believe it’s not the championship, it’s the money for James that’s enticing. What will happen to his relationship with the Heat if he wins in the next year or two, what will be left, he’ll have nothing left to ask for but even more money, and of course more TV time!

Without further ado I give you the YGS Tool of the Week - LeBron James!

I'll let the nominating go until 6 pm tomorrow and post the winner for TOTW some time in the even Saturday since I normally would have posted this two days in advance.

Have a great weekend everyone! Now I'll get back to watching the quarter size hail bounce off of my neighbor's cars....the idiots all have two car garages but instead they leave their BMW's and Escalade's in the driveway! Brilliant!!!!

It’s become almost customary to open up a newspaper and read a headline of an NFL player being arrested for some sort of mishap, usually brought on by poor judgment and their upbringing. We all know that you can take the kid out of the hood but you can’t take the hood out of the kid. Alan Iverson for one, he had his troubles in Hampton Virginia and did jail time after being found guilty of assault on a woman with a chair in a bowling alley. We’ve seen Ray Carruth sentenced to life in prison for the hit placed on his wife and unborn child because he didn’t want to pay alimony. I could go on and put up a 5,000 word essay just on arrest and convictions of NFL players but you get the picture.

Michael Vick is probably the most notorious of the current NFL class. His conviction on federal racketeering and dog fighting charges got him time in the federal pokey and when he emerged from behind bars told us all he was a changed man, that he had made many bad choices and he’s now seen the error of his ways and he told us he’d find a way to make amends by his actions so he could garner the trust of the fans. Well he’s been out of prison now about a year, and once again he has made his way into the headlines, and it’s apparent his initial statements are now under some scrutiny. Instead of having been away from the night club where his birthday party was going on prior to a shooting, it turns out from video that he may have lied, and done so while on probation. I don’t know the exact terms of this probation, but I do know that it generally includes no contact with police or known felons, and, it usually says that you are not to go into establishments where alcohol is served. Now, could you tell me that this night club was free of ex-cons or parolees and booze? Didn’t think so!

When he was released from prison I wrote that it wouldn’t be long before we heard Vick was involved in some off-field skirmish, and so I take great pride in being right…as if it was a stretch to get that prediction correct. What we’ll obvious see from the Commissioner Goodell, the king of multiple chances, the prince of forgiveness, the master of looking out for the owners and the bottom line is absolutely nothing. What’s the most Vick would get if he was to be found having lied to the police, a 3 game suspension and some counseling followed by another heartfelt press conference stating how he’s seen the light and the error of his ways, AGAIN? That’s been the trend hasn’t it? It makes it all better and why shouldn’t it? The fans never seem to tire of it, the NFL continuously gives passes to these scumbags and the stadiums where they play still fill-up and they are cheered when they run on the field. How quickly they forget.

Well I’m here to tell you that those who are members of the Gab are not a very forgiving bunch, we’re sick of the bullshit, we’re tired of over-paid crybabies who will do whatever they can to increase their bottom line while going through life thinking the rules don’t apply to them. Vick, who had plenty of time to pump iron and of course find his Lord and Savior, has again found himself in hot water, and maybe he likes it, it’s possible like many of his brethren he’s institutionalized, perhaps he found out Robert Braddy from Dimesports occupies the cell he used to have and wants to go back and talk about the old days when they gambled and bilked people out of their money.

 So until his probation officer files for a violation and returns him back to where he belongs in the first place I’ve got my job to do, and that’s to speak for those who nominated him in the first place…so without much further ado I present Michael Vick this week’s Gold Plunger by Binford as our Tool of the Week! No, don’t come up to the podium Michael, we’ll mail it to you, my dog is here and even though I can’t stand the little bastard I’m the only one who can hit the remote to zap him with his electric collar. So don’t even think about it, and good luck in prison!

                                     We Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who from the Kids are Alright!

Whoever it is there's one guarantee, they'll walk away with the Gold Plunger from Binford, placed ever-so comfortably in an orifice of their body! So don't wait, be sure to get your nominees in or you'll miss the chance to be the one who has nominated the TOOL OF THE WEEK!!!

Okay, the French soccer team is a no-brainer, even though I have yet to see an entire match, in fact what I do know I’ve seen on ESPiN, I’m going to pass on to you a personal experience with one of our neighbors across the pond, you tell me if I understand just why the French soccer team is our Tool of the Week.  

I am not a fan of soccer, I know the basic rules, have watched it in small spurts only to click the channel and look for something else, the Weather Channel has proven to be a viable option. I know even less about the French, that’s by choice, but what I do know is that they have a reputation for being, how shall I say; snobby? I did try to overcome my dislike for the French when my wife and I took in a foreign exchange student who was going to find out when he landed that his host family bailed on him along with 5 other students on the trip. I had the contract for WRIC in Richmond, the ABC affiliate and the weekend producer was telling me the story, I felt bad for the kid so I called my wife and asked her what she thought and 24 hours later we had our very own, unadjusted, rude, arrogant French teenager!!! Oh boy, was this just a great idea or what?

I could tell in pretty short order I wasn’t going to like this kid, and I was right, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying to be tolerant. First I thought it was a good idea to introduce him to something American – Thursday night softball practice with my buddies seemed like a good place to start. It was about 95 degrees as the sun went down and after learning pretty quickly he couldn’t catch, swing a bat or throw a ball, he ran off to the car after grabbing the keys and put the AC on for the duration…pussy! Saw that one coming a mile away. Later would come the incessant whining, you name it he whined about it. He got homesick on day three, I guess all the excitement in the Sully household was too much for the little darling.

My wife had a brainstorm, “let’s take him to D.C. and let him check out the museums”! That’s what I want, to take this kid I can hardly understand in a car for a 2 hour trip and listen to how great fuckin’ Paris is on the way and their food, how exquisite it is, then have him end the day saying “those are you museums”? He wouldn’t want to even go there in our nation’s Capitol. I had trouble getting Francois to even eat a burger from Applebee’s, he couldn’t shut up when it came to French cuisine, but he did want to know where McDonald’s was…ah, the educated palate.

 We get to the White house for the tour, do you think that the presence of men in suits with earpieces everywhere makes him pause and not touch anything? Wrong…dipstick reaches over the velvet ropes to touch one of the no-no’s and is scolded quickly by a secret service agent. No, not embarrassing at all. Then we get to the air and Space museum and this idiot walks to the front the line as if the 200 people behind him weren’t even there. I walked up and smacked him in the back of the head and told him he was lucky no one threw him over the balcony! Moron. I guess in France they walk all over each other, because he was quite at ease being a douche bag.

So I did some research, not much, just enough to get familiar with the story, because until now I only heard snippets and as I’ve said, I’m not interested. From what I’ve learned, the French soccer team “Les Bleu’s” have turned the country upside down. They have returned home in disgrace, their captain met with the French Prime Minister to discuss the events that unfolded in South Africa. You know you’ve public relation issues when you go directly to the head of state and make your case for damage control. You’ve got even bigger problems when the French people themselves mark you with a Scarlet Letter, that’s REALLY saying something. At any rate, you nominated them, and I’ve lived through two weeks with my own French soccer team, and I had no problem giving him back when his two weeks were up!

To all those on the French soccer team, we here at YGS proudly place this TOTW Golden Plunger right where it deserves to be, now smile and say BRIE! Douche bags.

Since I'm up here in Beantown and attended last  night's return of Manny Ramirez I felt it necessary to make a management decision and overrule the normal nomination process because last night I came across more than one TOOL at Fenway Park. The following is in order of appearance. When Stevie D and I were walking behind the home plate area we had just passed the Dodger dugout and heard booing, when we looked back over our shoulders we saw Manny Ramirez had just ran out onto the field to stretch...they were giving it to him pretty good...must have been all those Emerson College interns handing out WEEI posters saying "Who Needs Manny" on one side and "K" on the other that got them motivated. Ramirez batted 4th in the DH spot, this was obviously calculated by Joe Torre to keep Manny from being harassed in left field, which used to be home for him. When he first came to bat in the top of the second inning he really got it from the crowd,and I don't know what game Torre was at but he was far from accurate when it came to judging the percentage of who gave him a warm reception and those who gave him an up yours card! He didn't acknowledge anything and proceeded to fly out to JD Drew who then pulled a hamstring running in on the catch and was replaced in the game by Darnell McDonald. Manny is TOTW recipient number one just because the list is endless

Next up, the Obnoxious Laker fan; Oh no he didn't? Oh yes he did! About 4 rows behind us in the 5th inning we heard yelling and when we turned around a guy wearing a Celtics t-shirt and his opponent, a guy wearing a Kobe Bryant game jersey began to throw down, the Laker fan started it (as far sere concerned) and at first it looked like the Celtics fan got in a couple of good shots then the Laker fan got the shirt over his head and began to wail on the Boston fan. He had the advantage, he was sitting one row behind the C's fan but other fans got right in there to break it up. The Boston fan ended up standing next to me and we  tried to tell him to back off or he was going to get tossed but he wanted more of the guy, the Laker fan sat back in his seat bleeding from the nose and blowing kisses and holding up 5 fingers, indicating Bryant's rings and then the Boston fan really wanted a piece of him, so did a few others, who by now were all chanting BEAT LA, BEAT LA, he knew then he wasn't going to be comfy for too much longer and security came and bounced the Laker fan, of course everyone yelled he started it. He might not have started he argument right then, but he started it by wearing that frickin shirt less than 24 hours after the game. We all have seen this guy before, it won't be the first time and sure as shit won't be the last..

Tool number three was Rhianna..this gash ( my new word for women TOOLS) comes in with security blocking everything so she can get to her seat in the front row next to he Red Sox dugout while the inning was in progress and you could see it was disruptive. John Henry came in with the woman in black, a nice looking babe (yeah, like he'd go out with a mutt right), but at least he waited until it was the start of the 4th before he walked down to the box seat. We later found out she's dating Matt Kemp and has been for a while, well since she was last seen being smacked around by Chris Brown!

And the last TOOL at Fenway... Roger Clemens. What the fuck was Roger Clemens doing sitting on the Green Monster for a Dodger-Red Sox game? Too bad no one had the berries to go over and push the previous TOTW/TOTY award winner over the edge and down to the warning track...it wouldn't have broken my heart!

Well those are your Tool of the Week winner's...and if I don't get back to you in the next day or so I'll fill you all in on the summit between me, Lanz and Mo at Kowloon's on Monday!

I also want to wish all the dad's at YGS a Happy Father's Day...we rule, regardless of what the little woman might think, right?