Dave LaRoche
American baseball player and coach
David Eugene LaRoche (né Garcia; born May 14, 1948) is an American former professional baseball pitcher and coach. LaRoche is most famous for throwing his own variant of the eephus pitch, which he called "La Lob". Over his career, LaRoche went 65–58, with 819 strikeouts in 1,0491⁄3 innings pitched. He has a career 3.53 ERA.
Before retiring from baseball following the 2015 season, LaRoche was the pitching coach for the New York Mets' short-season affiliate, the Brooklyn Cyclones. He is the father of former MLB players Adam LaRoche and Andy LaRoche.
Biography
LaRoche was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His surname was Garcia, but he changed it to LaRoche at age seven, the last name of his stepfather. "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 was drafted by the California Angels in the 5th round of the 1967 amateur draft out of West High School in Torrance, CA. He made his debut for the California Angels in 1970 and went on to pitch 14 seasons in the major leagues.
“Dave LaRoche” enters the record as american baseball player and coach. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dave, LaRoche and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dave LaRoche” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dave, LaRoche and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16121594. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2015, 1979 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dave LaRoche” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.