The Futility Infielder

Christian Ruzich, who's been a good pal to a bunch of us in the world of baseball blogs, took a real hard one in the loss column this week. And I don't mean a ballgame, so I'll dispense with further metaphors along those lines and any mention of the his favorite team's dramatic postseason misfortunes. Ruzich, who runs The Cub Reporter and hosts several other sites, is a resident of Cuyamaca, California, a tiny town 40 miles southwest of San Diego. A week ago, that town was evacuated because of the wildfires raging in California, and the blaze -- the Cedar Fire, largest in California history in terms of acreage -- ended up destroying about 90% of the town, and all but 25 out of Cuyamaca's 145 homes.

Christian was several thousand miles away as this all happened, vacationing in Paris. On Friday his father, who was with him in Paris and who also lives in Cuyamaca, returned to the town and confirmed their worst fears: both of their houses were destroyed. The "good news" in this realm is Christian's truck and car were unharmed. Most importantly, Christian, his wife, and his dogs were unharmed.

Imagine losing all of your worldly possessions except for whatever you may have haphazardly thrown in a suitcase two weeks ago. For your mind not to reel at that concept constitutes proof that you've already joined a monastery and renounced all trappings of the material world, in which case what the hell are you doing here?

Me, I'm a fairly stuff-heavy guy. Books, music, computer gear, artwork, memorabilia, photos, clothing -- I've crammed my tiny Manhattan apartment with enough of that stuff to fill a place four times the size, and somehow I convinced my girlfriend to shoehorn herself and her belongings alongside of me. Our (ok, my) unholy but rather well-organized (cough) collection of objects is testament to thousands of individual decisions that I can't, under my present circumstances, imagine living without some of this crap. Sure, it's not 1987 now, but who knows when somebody will refer to a Bill James article in the '87 Abstract?

I'm babbling about myself, but that's because I don't really know what to say about Christian. I can only begin to fathom his loss, hope that no one he loves was injured or worse in the fire, and wish him the best of luck in putting the pieces back together. I would hope and suspect that he's got homeowner's insurance, which will cover the bulk of this financially, but with a deductible that's some percentage of a mortgage, that's still a big financial hit. Who can replace the memories that one's possessions hold? To say nothing of the possibility that he may have lost a good chunk of everything he's ever written if he had a computer there (from now on, I'm storing some backup disks offsite).

Over the past two years, Ruz's site has meant a lot to me -- that little Pitchers and Catchers countdown he had going in the upper left corner last winter did more to keep me sane than all the Peter Gammons columns in the world, and the rest of the site is pretty kick-ass as well. Furthermore, Christian's support has meant a lot to this site; he's plugged my column plenty of times, and his technical facility in the vagaries of RSS helped me to expand my audience considerably. Along with countless other bloggers out there, I owe him some thanks, and my heart goes out to him and his family during this difficult time.

Ruz already has a means of accepting donations to support his weblog via PayPal. If you're reading this, I ask you to consider digging a little something out of your wallet. It's not going to bring his home or his possessions back, but it will remind him that he's got a lot of people pulling for him, and taken altogether, the money might be enough to replace an item that really meant something to him.