Writing for Mike Fratello

A long, long, time ago, I can still remember how the tale began ....

It was after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when I was living in a tiny apartment on Bayou Saint John in New Orleans.

A lady named Paige and her Mom, Rosemary, had been ordering medals and we got to "know" each other through e mailing and our work at www.SaintsforSinners.com

Paige was involved in an Akron, Ohio Hospital fund raiser for kids with cancer called Denim and Diamonds.

She asked if we (SaintsforSinners) would be willing to contribute some items for the Silent Auction. Of course, we said yes, and somehow, through luck or just because my cousin Sue is a gem, we also got my dear cousin Sue to help us design beautiful one-of-a-kind SaintsforSinners necklaces.

Sue, being from eastern Long Island, is a lover of the water and the ocean and she collects beach glass. She offered to weave (Saint Anastasia, patron of weavers must have been lurking nearby) some of her beach glass into a SaintsforSinners medals and create a unique necklace.

So, that's what she did and the result was that we were able to raise a lot of money for the fund raiser, which was great!

Somewhere along the line, some people involved with the fund raiser also asked if we could do something special for the sports broadcaster and then Memphis Grizzlies coach, Mike Fratello, because Mike was helping with the fund raiser too.

Of course, being the celebrity hound he tends to be, the founder of SaintsforSinners said yes!

We decided to write a new story about Saint Sebastian, the patron of athletes, for Coach Fratello.

The Grizzlies were losing games and not doing very well in the official NBA standings.

So, we got to thinking and questioning whether winning or losing really mattered, and we concluded it did not.

What really, truly matters in athletics, and life, is how the "game" is played.

The Grizzlies were struggling but Coach Fratello was still working hard and also dedicating his free time to help raise money for a hospital dedicated to helping kids with cancer.

So, we wrote a new story about saint Sebastian, the patron of athletes, and we hid a story within the story that was a message to Mike Fratello, the man.

We reminded him that the things that were most important were playing the game with a sense of fair play and integrity, and working as team.

We managed to convey that what an athlete does off the field, like say, working to raise needed funds for hospitals, is also part of the "big equation."

And we sent our saint Sebastian medal package for Mike off to Akron, Ohio.

We did harbor a hope that we might hear from Mike Fratello and somehow get him on the SaintsforSinners "Hall of Fame-ous," and although we did hear back from Mike's friends, the Hall of Fame inclusion was not meant to be.

That was OK, though, because Sue and SaintsforSinners made a nice contribution to the Denim and Diamonds Fund Raiser and that was the most important thing.

Time passed (that's what it does, like it or not).

We moved out of our little apartment and back into a brand new home in the exact same spot where our old home had been bulldozed away after the flood.

2009 arrived and a phone call came in to SaintsforSinners. It was from a lady named Jessica and she wanted medals for a boys football team at Our Lady Mount Carmel in Indiana.

We offered a nice discount and went about preparing the medal packages for the boys.

Thanks to our work for Denim and Diamonds and Mike Fratello, our story was already written and with a few quick edits, and with some time spent carefully painting Saint Sebastian medals, we had the Saint Sebastian medal packages prepared and ready and off they went to Indiana.

Weeks went by and we did not hear from the folks in Indiana. We wrongly concluded that perhaps the medals were not up-to-par and were disappointed.

Time kept marching and December 3, 2009 arrived.

Late in the day, SaintsforSinners received an e mail from the coach of the boys football team in Indiana.

In it, he thanked us and also Jessica, for "finding" us. He said that the medals and the story were "perfect" and reinforced the integral themes about "good sportsmanship," which is the most important thing to learn when beginning to play sports of any kind.

The coach also included a nice picture of all the boys proudly wearing their saint Sebastian medals. It's included up above (click on it to see a larger image) and that photo of those boys wearing our medal designs will go up on our Hall of Fame-ous soon, right between Paula Deen and Bruce Springsteen. Bruce and Paula should be proud to be in their company.