Introduction (I guess)

(take a nice, long look at the greatest art work on Sonic the Hedgehog; truly riveting)

Giddy up!

My name is Tony, and I am the curator of Kramer Sports Industries, a blog that I am starting as a means of subsidizing my proclivity to lengthy analytical pieces to a format that is more appropriate to such ventures.

While I do pride myself as being capable of objective analysis of sports teams, I refuse to try and hide my allegiances. I am a life-long fan of the New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Florida Gators. The obvious question becomes about how did the Yankees end up in that mix, but the easy answer is that I am a product of the '90s, and my allegiances were forged during the brief time frame between when the Tampa Bay Lightning first took the ice (October 1992) and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' inception as a baseball team (April 1998). My Yankee fandom has led to secondary allegiances towards the New York Giants and New York Rangers, though I cannot fathom those teams ever meaning more to me than the Bucs or Lightning, barring my moving to New York in the future.

Unfortunately, as a baseball and football fan with almost equal passion, there's no real "good" time to begin a blog that will feature discussions on the two sports. Starting in April (for baseball) would mean a dearth of football content (as of August 26, 2013, discussing the NFL Draft is not a specialty of mine, in the slightest way). Starting at the end of August means only catching baseball at the tail end of the regular season, and it is a regret of mine in that regard to be starting this blog at such a late juncture of the baseball season, but alas, that's the way it goes, sometimes. I also enjoy talking NHL hockey and even a little bit of European soccer (as well as the first three editions of Sonic the Hedgehog; long live Sonic the Hedgehog, STH 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles).

In time, it will be interesting to see the direction this blog takes; I consider myself a student of the games of football and hockey; baseball is very much my strongest sport within where much of my knowledge is rather innate and intuitive, while with football, for instance, I still consider myself in need of learning about the game (i.e. - how does a 3-4 defense work, what are the basics of it, who holds what responsibilities, etc.). To that end, websites I have used for research purposes such as the ProFootballFocus are valuable beyond words.

For the remainder of the upcoming month, I will likely talk more baseball than football. My football notes and observations will probably come to the fore-front more once the baseball season ends and there's not any chances left to bitch about the Yankees on a day-in/day-out basis like there still is as of today. I look forward to this venture, and I certainly encourage feedback on how to make it better. I also encourage feedback in the form of telling me when I am completely off on something or if I'm just being an overall ignoramous or moron. I could not finish this opening post to this blog venture without revealing in obvious detail that I am a very cynical, very weary, and, overall, an enormously snarky individual who may or may not have recurring OCD problems that display themselves in ways that can only make on-lookers think that I am the biggest lunatic on the planet.

If I ever start talking about "when does a pizza become a pizza" or whether I think there is an efficient way to create bladder systems for oil tankers, or, hell, when I start talking that I've heard about problematic bathroom stalls at Yankee Stadium, well, then you know I've started to fly off the deep end regarding my undisputed favorite character in television history. I have nothing but great things to say about Seinfeld as a television show, and even though I have not watched the show with regularity for a few years now, much of what I saw still sticks with me even today.

Is there any other irrelevant conjecture I can think to add to this opening post? I was a guest on Episode #7 of the Mike & Greg Talk Baseball podcast in July (the Mike & Greg shows can be found there among others from the self-described podcasting fool known as "infrared41" in internet circles). That's about the extent of my prior internet ventures that doesn't involve writing a whole ton of text and clicking some button that prints it out for the world to see and laugh at.

I am on Twitter @KramerIndustry. There is a great deal of Yankees-related tweeting during the baseball season. You have been warned.

So there's that. I've written far more than I cared to write for this, which actually is quite apropos for my writing style. I look forward to writing about actual sports analysis next time around.

Cheers.