How 'bout those Yankees!

Some of you may not know this (though others who have been reading this blog for some time will remember): I am a New York Yankees fan.  Indeed, as I explained three and a half years ago, I am a Taoist Yankee fan.  There is, I believe, also a Confucian case to be made for Yankee fandom, one that would draw upon the duties and allegiances I have acquired through my social relationships (i.e. I was born into it, and my early New York friends cultivated it within me), but I will stick with my Taoist understanding.

That said, I write today to note, with pleasure, the recent success of the team.  First place in the American League East.  All is right in Way.  And Nick Swisher is emerging as a Chuang Tzu-like, live-in-the-moment, just-marvel-at-it-all kind of guy:

“Nick Swisher is crazy,” Rivera said. “He’s wild. He’s a great personality. You’ve got to have personalities like that. When the team’s maybe too tense, he just makes you smile with the craziness that he has. His attitude is great.”
...

Swisher described his role as “having fun and laughing and joking around.” He added: “A lot of people in this world would give their right arm to trade spots with me. With every win we get, the fun is building up.”

Brings Chuang Tzu to mind:

Birth and death, living and dead, failure and success, poverty and wealth, honor and dishonor, slander and praise, hunger and thirst, hot and cold - such are the transformations of this world, the movements of its inevitable nature.  They keep vanishing into one another before our very eyes, day in and day out, but we'll never calibrate what drives them.  So how can they steal our serenity, how can they plunder the spirit's treasure-house?  If you let them move together, at ease and serene, you'll never lose your joy.  And if you do this without pause, day in and day out, you'll invest all things with spring... (75)

Good advice for a baseball player.