So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way

On a broad scale, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez are very similar, in the fact that they both are one of the lucky few who get/got  to play baseball for a living. They were both born in the Dominican Republic, and they even play the same general position of outfield. However, if you zoom in strictly to the world of baseball players, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez aren’t very similar at all. They are separated by thirteen years of age, 511 home runs, and probably around 40 pounds. They have never played on the same team, and have a moderate discrepancy in career salaries – somewhere around $201 million. Even in their tiny, inevitably-meaningless world, there aren’t a whole lot of reasons for Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez to, like, hang out.

And yet, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez will not let social norms and societal precedents guide them. They will march to the beat of their own drummers. They will blaze their own trails, carve their own niches, answer to no one but themselves. They’re gonna get all Dead Poets Society up in this bitch. We are not their dads, and we can’t tell them what to do.

So, yeah, if Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez want to hang out, they will. If they want to go to what looks like some sort of quinceañera held in the unfinished back room of a banquet hall, they’re going to do it. If they want to pose for a blurry picture with a card table full of salads, baked beans, and what appears to be a slow-roasted human leg, they will, damn it. And if Carlos Gomez wants to tweet that picture, then no one is going to stop him. Because life is short. You should spend as much of it as you can at a cannibal party with players too washed-up to catch on with the Oakland A’s. Carpe diem, indeed, Carlos Gomez and Manny Ramirez. Let us all raise a glass to this most curious of friendships.