BATON ROUGE, La. – Coach Roger Cador definitely was one of a kind.
In these days of football coaches demanding $10 million-plus annually in compensation and men’s college basketball squads with $12-15 million payrolls, he was a nice-guy anomaly.
Roger Cador, who passed away here June 30 at the age of 74 after battling cancer and multiple health issues for a number of years, left his mark on thousands of student-athletes and millions of college and professional baseball fans and administrators nationally.
When he arrived as head coach at Southern University prior to the 
1985 season (after playing basketball and baseball at SU in the 1970s and serving as assistant basketball coach at his alma mater from 1978-84), the baseball team had no uniforms, the playing field was in disrepair, and Coach Cador was told to call on local merchants and alumni to equip the squad and to help with field maintenance.
Some 33 seasons later, 14 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles, 22 SWAC West Division crowns, 13 SWAC Coach of the Year kudos, two HBCU Division I national championships, and he most victories by any HBCU head coach in any sport at 913-597-1 (.604 winning percentage), he called it a career at the end of the 2017 campaign and retirement.
Retirement? Coach Cador did not know the meaning of the word. He continued to speak every time Southern administrators asked him, he raised additional funds for his diamond successors, he joined fellow College Baseball Hall of Fame head coach Skip Bertman of LSU as chairs of the Baton Rouge Boy Scouts charity drives, fried turkeys at Thanksgiving for underserved families, and created goodwill throughout South Louisiana.
He also worked with Major League Baseball and the RBI program – Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities – to put on clinics both in the U.S., South and Central America and remained “on call” when former players, current coaches or even fellow Louisianans contacted him for words of wisdom and advice both about baseball and life.
In his later years he collaborated with the late HBCU baseball enthusiast Michael Coker to organize the Black College Baseball World Series in Montgomery, Ala., to assist universities and student-athletes in NCAA Division II and NAIA ranks for additional recognition and rewards for their hard-earned efforts through Black College Nines, the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and related groups from 2021-24 in historic Montgomery, Ala.
These often-overlooked tasks were recognized by such groups as the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the CBF, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame, and similar national groups as Coach Cador received numerous national honors following his on-field exploits.
His massive list of achievements also included two historic NCAA Regional baseball triumphs over Cal State Fullerton in the 1987 NCAA tourney when CSUF was ranked No. 2 nationally at one juncture, the first HBCU program NCAA play-in victory over Austin Peay in 1996 and 11 total NCAA appearances after the Jaguars had played in the NAIA ranks for their first 34 seasons of intercollegiate activity.
His coaching expertise led to the naming of All-America infielder Rickie Weeks from the 2003 Jaguars as the first HBCU star to win Division I Player of the Year honors – the Dick Howser Trophy and the Golden Spikes Award. Weeks, who later played for 15 seasons in the majors from 2003-17, batted .479 to lead NCAA Division I and still holds the NCAA career record for batting average at .465. There were 62 of Southern’s 96 all-time MLB players drafted who were coached by the native of Cross Roads, La.
Coach Cador earlier starred as collegiate basketball-baseball performer from 1970-73 (batting .393 to lead the Jaguars in ’72) before signing with the Atlanta Braves organization in ’73. While playing for the Class AA Southern League Savannah squad in 1975, he launched a 410-foot homer off the legendary Mark Fidrych of the league’s Montgomery Rebels and had some fun times of remembrance when he passed by the old minor league park in the Alabama capital.
Coach Cador almost accomplished his lifelong dream of playing in the majors in 1977 when he was promoted to the Braves AAA squad in Richmond, Va., but just missed a callup to join the likes of Atlanta’s
Jeff Burroughs, Willie Montanez, Gary Matthews, Phil Niekro, and Dick Ruthven, among others.
But his true calling in life was one of encouragement, self-discipline, overcoming even the most serious obstacles, and finding solutions to virtually every college baseball situation – and this with a beaming smile and booming voice.
On a personal note, this writer was privileged to meet Coach Cador for the first time in 2003 during Dick Howser Trophy festivities in Omaha, and an instant friendship followed.
Coach Cador always ended our frequent conversations with “Bo knows
Bo” from the old Bo Jackson Nike commercials, and his favorite line from those was “Bo (Jackson), you don’t know Diddley” when famed guitarist Bo Diddley appeared with the Auburn two-sport star.
There never will be another coach or human like Roger Cador: the Good Lord definitely broke that mold.