Francisco Lindor joins in the Summer of the Slide with amazing, back-breaking effort to avoid tag

Culture is cyclical. Trends come, go, and return -- on whose whims we'll never know. Slap bracelets, Tamagotchi, those weird shoes with the roller skates underneath them: These are the things that took over popular culture before receding to the gene pool where they'll reside until they're called forth once they're considered properly retro. 

Baseball is beholden to these same principles. Whether it's uniform fashion (just look at the popularity of retro uniform nights) or even the style of play with our current era's pitching-dominated game harkening back to the 1960s. 

This summer has its own trend: Sweet, sweet beautiful slides. Slides that force us to do all we can not to make Matrix references (for those aren't back in vogue yet):

Slides that pull into sharp focus the beauty of a body in motion: 

And sometimes slides that look like players forgot how to slide halfway through. 

While facing the Blue Jays on Tuesday night, Francisco Lindor was like me in fifth grade when I finally convinced my parents I needed a Tamagotchi and joined the fad because, c'mon, no one wants to be left out. 

After hitting a blooper to the gap off Aaron Sanchez, Lindor decided that he'd show off his wheels (dressed in beautifully displayed stirrups, natch), and hustled into second base. But since the ball was already there, Lindor needed to show off his well-trained transverse abs and, with a move seemingly pulled from a crossfit class from hell, lifted his arm up and around the tag to slide in safely.

Though the umpires would need to review the play, both to double-check and also to marvel at how rad it was. 

As if blessed with the gift of clairvoyance, Kevin Millar actually asked Lindor about his penchant for running until he's tagged out before the game, the young rookie responding by saying "That's Little League style right there. You run until they tag you out."