Mile High Sports

Rockies reliever Carlos Estévez meets the original “Wild Thing”

Casey Light

TV and movie star Charlie Sheen might be most known for role in “Two and Half Men” and his playboy lifestyle, but before he was 40 percent of TV’s top comedy and before he made the words “tiger blood” and “winning” into sound bytes, he was known to sports fans as Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn from the cult baseball classic “Major League.” But even before that he was a youthful actor who had changed his name to follow in the footsteps of his father. The young Carlos Estévez became known in Hollywood as “Charles” sharing the stage name, “Sheen,” that his father, Martin (Ramón Estévez), used.

Fast forward more than 30 years from Charlie Sheen’s early performances in movies like “Red Dawn” and “The Boys Next Door” and another you’ll find another young Carlos Estévez trying to make a name for himself, albeit in baseball, and not employing a stage name.

Colorado Rockies reliever Carlos Estévez has just 19 major league appearances under his belt, but manager Walt Weiss has big things in mind for the hard-throwing right-hander out of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Estévez is one of three young power arms in the Rockies bullpen this season competing for the seventh or eighth inning stopper role, with eyes on potentially becoming the club’s closer in the not-too-distant future. At just 23 years old, he has plenty of time. He just needs to tame his 95+ mph fastball.

Estévez knows the irony of that, because of his name, which is why he enters from the bullpen to “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, the song made famous in “Major League” as the entrance music for Sheen’s hard-throwing and wild (on- and off-the-field) character.

So when the Rockies stopped in Los Angeles, Sheen’s haunting ground, the young Estévez put in plan a motion to meet the other Carlos Estévez. With the help of Sheen’s best friend, Tony Todd, the Rockies reliever was able to meet the original Wild Thing and snap a few pictures.

Based on the look on his face, the meeting was quite “groovy.”

Sadly, his results the following night were not. Estévez gave up a two-out, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth in a loss to the Dodgers. Estévez and the Rockies will take another crack at “winning” on Wednesday night in the series finale.

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