You don't have to be too old to remember this one, but there was a time when Adam LaRoche was the local hero.

Morning to you. Good. Tuesday morning, I'm Dan Kavach, Beach of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins. Hope you'll check those out as well. Pirates Fest is coming up this weekend. Yes, it's actually back, and yes, it's back downtown where it belongs at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

It's a Saturday and Sunday morning slash afternoon event.

And it's an event that matters to the team, if only from the standpoint of selling anything in advance.

I say this all the time during the season, but now is a good time to bring it up because

this is when it happens. You don't sell your tickets in June and July.

You don't sell your tickets based on whether or not the team had a nice game or a nice series or a nice road trip.

You just don't.

The tickets get sold now in the form of season tickets, group sales.

It's all done beforehand.

That's not just true of the pirates.

That's true of everybody in professional sports.

They'll all tell you that, the people who run the business ends of these operations.

Back in 2007, whether it was coincidence or not, the pirates acquired LaRoche from the Braves in a trade that sent Mike Gonzalez to Atlanta.

And it was a big deal at the time. The pirates were looking for some left-handed power in the wake of Brian Giles not being around anymore.

There was still a common notion back then that if you weren't hitting left-handed home runs at PNC Park, why did you even build the place?

That's kind of faded over time, but it was a real thing then.

And LaRoche had the numbers in Atlanta.

They weren't spectacular.

They were, well, exactly what you ended up getting here for a handful of years.

25 homers, 280 average, 75 RBIs.

He'd get off to slow starts, and then he'd get going,

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