What is it with bloggers and fire? A little over a year ago, Christian Ruzich of All-Baseball.com lost his entire home in one of those California wildfires. A couple of nights ago the apartment of Larry Mahnken of The Hardball Times and Replacement Level Yankees Weblog burned down. Larry was unhurt, but he lost everything beyond the clothes he was wearing, and he had no insurance. He’s currently living with his sister and displaying his gallows humor via Baseball Think Factory.

It was only a few days ago that Larry and I were communicating about DIPS 2004; he’s been a huge ally in that project over the past couple of years. The two of us have never met, but we’ve corresponded with reasonable frequency, and we’re on the same side of many battles, whether it’s rooting for the Yankees, railing against Productive Outs, or spreading the DIPS gospel. He’s a good guy.

Back when the bad news befell Ruz, I tried to spend a few moments in his shoes; only then could I even begin to comprehend the magnitude of his loss. Since I don’t have anything more coherent to add about Larry, I’ll rerun an applicable bit of what I wrote:

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, and 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… 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… 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).

It would be a really nice gesture to stop by the RLYW and make a small PayPal donation to help Larry out. We can’t replace everything he lost, but we can let him know that we’re thinking about him, and maybe do enough to buy the guy a little something that reminds him of that.

Larry, if you’re reading this, hang in there.