Background
LaRoche was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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Dave LaRoche
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LaRoche is the pitching coach for the New York Mets" short-season affiliate, the Brooklyn Cyclones. He is the father of MLB players Adam LaRoche and Andy LaRoche. "LaRoche is French, but I have no French in me", Andy LaRoche said.
"My grandfather was 100% Mexican." According to the 1979 Complete Handbook of Baseball, LaRoche decided to change his name because classmates often teased him because an overweight, bumbling character on the then popular television program Zorro was named Sergeant Garcia.
LaRoche made his debut for the California Angels in 1970 and went on to pitch 14 seasons in the major leagues. LaRoche is most famous for throwing his own variant of the eephus pitch, which he called "Louisiana Lob".
Over his career, LaRoche went 65–58, with 819 strikeouts in 1,0491⁄3 innings pitched. He has a career 3.53 European Research Area. During his time as a player representative for the Minnesota Twins LaRoche had a reputation as a troublemaker.
According to Twins teammate Bert Blyleven, "A reporter asked him why he wanted to be player representative and Dave said, "Because all the player reps under Calvin Griffith get traded.""
LaRoche"s sons Adam (a first baseman) and Andy (a third baseman) both became MLB players.
Another son, Jeff LaRoche, played minor league baseball before entering law enforcement.
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Quotations: "LaRoche is French, but I have no French in me".
