Former Indians Star Baerga to Throw Out First Pitch Before Game 2 of the World Series

Carlos Baerga is heading back to the World Series…

The 47-year-old Puerto Rican former Major League Baseball player, a star of the Cleveland Indians in the 1990s, will throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the World Series.

Carlos Baerga

Baerga, a three-time All-Star second baseman, will handle the duties before Game 2 of the series that pits Cleveland against the Chicago Cubs.

Kenny Lofton, Cleveland’s former fleet-footed center fielder, will have the honor before Game 1.

It’s Cleveland’s third World Series appearance since 1995.

Indians fans had pushed on social media to have actor Charlie Sheen — who played hard-throwing pitcher Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn in the movie Major League — throw out the first pitch. But, team officials had already decided on Lofton and Baerga, who played together on Cleveland’s 1995 World Series team.

Sheen to Serve as a Guest Analyst on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight”

Charlie Sheen is ready to play ball

The 48-year-old part-Spanish actor will serve as a guest analyst on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight when the show broadcasts live from the Cincinnati RedsSt. Louis Cardinals game on Sunday night.

Charlie Sheen

Sheen will be in the broadcast booth for the Sunday Night Countdown show airing on ESPN at 7:00 pm ET from Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark.

Sheen is an avid baseball fan and portrayed a player in Major League (plus the sequel) and Eight Men Out.

Even though he grew up in California — where he was a star pitcher and shortstop for the Santa Monica High School baseball team — Sheen has been a lifelong Reds fan because his West Wing star father, Martin Sheen, is from Dayton, Ohio.

It has been a long time since Sheen graduated from high school, but he still roots for his team and posted a photo of the SaMo High Vikings mascot on Twitter earlier this month with a shout-out to the coach, Tony Todd. He reportedly has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the school’s baseball program since playing there in the 1980s, including buying a new pitching machine in January.

Sheen convincingly played an ex-con reliever for the Cleveland Indians in both Major League films, and portrayed Chicago’s Happy Felsch in Eight Man Out, the biopic about the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Even his wedding to Denise Richards in 2002 was celebrated with a gospel rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Park” during the ceremony, and one of the wedding gifts was an authentic Gold Glove trophy.

The former Two and a Half Men star, who later went on to launch his comedy series Anger Managementon FX, follows in the footsteps of Jon Hamm, who was a guest analyst on Baseball Tonight during the Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates game May 11, after the ESPN crew joined him on the red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of Million Dollar Arm.

Like Hamm, Sheen will join Reds legend and Hall of Famer Barry Larkin and Baseball Tonight host Karl Ravech on the set.

Viewers can expect to see more special broadcast events to celebrate the 25th season of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight and Sunday Night Baseball, as the network is planning to get other famous fans involved.