We Used To Follow Lucas Duda

Things change, sometimes because they need to and sometimes even when they don’t. There is no use in trying to assign reason to the blowing of the wind. It is life; it moves crushingly and ceaselessly forward; it is eligible for free agency after the World Series. And, you know, this season has turned into a bit of a “rebuilding” one (season) for just about all of us. C’est la vie.

Lucas Duda is a Tampa Bay Ray now.

I’m a Mets fan, but I’m not a Mets fan who knows too much in particular about the Mets or, more generally, baseball. In fact, that Lucas Duda was a Mets first baseman was one of the main things I knew about the Mets. Now the things I know about the Mets are: Curtis Grandson is very kind, Noah Syndergaard is 24 years old, and Yoenis Cespedes had a custom walk-up song by Fina that went “Cespedes.” And that I will love the Mets undyingly forever. But this isn’t about me.

As you know, Lucas Duda was the involuntary co-star of wefollowlucasduda, Instagram’s best account. It is — perhaps more accurately, was — maintained by Curtis Granderson who is my Met crush, in case he is reading this. I wrote about it once. (A good tip is to never reread anything you’ve written.) There have been few updates in recent months, and it is now clear that we should have taken the lack of updates as a positive i.e. “no news (du’s) is good news (du’s).” Yesterday we got two.

The final two.

No.

“He’s got a long red-eye flight tonight,” Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash said unfeelingly, of Duda. “He’ll get in here, and the plan is to DH him tomorrow.” I do not know what DH means. But I do know that the idea of trading is too harsh. Perhaps trading in sports should be outlawed. But that is a topic for another day.

Today, let’s remember to cherish our friends and our loved ones and our favorite Instagram accounts and our Mets. Who knows who could be a “Tampa Bay Ray”* next.

*A euphemism both for dying and for being traded from the Mets.