Charlie Sheen was apparently among the forerunners of steroid use in baseball. Fictional baseball, that is. The drug-loving former star of Two and a Half Men tells Sports Illustrated in this week’s “Where Are They Now” issue that that he took steroids to prep for his role as Ricky Vaughn in the 1989 baseball film Major League.
“Let’s just say that I was enhancing my performance a little bit,” says Sheen. “It was the only time I ever did steroids. I did them for like six or eight weeks. You can print this, I don’t give a f-. My fastball went from 79 to like 85.”
Apparently those extra mph’s were enough to beat the vaunted bat speed of Pete Vukovich, aka, Haywood, the power-hitting first baseman for the Yankees in Major League. The downside was that the steroids made Sheen an angry Charlie, particularly when people in bars commented on the haircut he donned for the movie; so he stopped using them.
“I didn’t like the haircut because it generated so many comments in bars. I’ve got enough of that already. Add (steroids) to the mix, and it’s a recipe for a fistfight.”