Gonzaga Athletic Hall of Fame
Leon Cadore is best remembered among baseball fans for a single, long day in May of 1920, but his professional baseball career spanned 13 seasons. That long day was a record 26-inning. 1-1 pitching duel with Joe Oeschger of the Boston Braves in a game called by darkness. Cadore came out West from New York as a 13-year-old orphan to live with an uncle in Hope, Idaho. As he matured, work in the mines was a next step, but Leon attended Gonzaga and excelled as an infielder collegiately and later as a semipro. In 1912 he hitchhiked to Jersey City, N.J., and caught on as a pitcher. He made the majors in 1915, and eight of his 13 big-league seasons were spent in Brooklyn, including pennant-winning seasons of 1916 and 1920. Cadore entertained teammates with sleight-of-hand and he could make a baseball do tricks too. An admiring friend, Casey Stengel, once noted, “He could scuff a baseball with one hand.” He was chosen as a charter member of the Inland Empire Sports Hall of Fame in 1963.
