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Fletcher's Stairway to Success
London Fletcher's NFL coaches will simply shake their heads in disbelief at the ability in Fletcher's body. In their world there is no logical explanation for a linebacker who stands 5 feet 10, yet hits ballcarriers like a cement truck.
(Greg Ruffing - For The Post)
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By then a bond had grown between London and Isaac. The director of the Rec understood London. "I came from a big family and my mom was my hero," Isaac said. "I was able to identify with the things he was going through."
Isaac became a father, brother, coach and uncle all at once. When he went door-to-door to local businesses trying to raise money to take their AAU basketball team of young teenagers to the national tournament in Las Vegas, only Fletcher showed enough interest to get up at 5 a.m. and join Isaac.
One day Fletcher was playing basketball at Cleveland State, against some of the school's starters, when in walked Mike Moran, the basketball coach at Villa Angela-St. Joseph High, one of the top athletic schools in the state. Kevin Mackey, the Cleveland State coach, nodded at the small but powerfully built Fletcher.
"He could probably help you in a couple years," Moran remembered saying to Mackey.
"He's only in eighth grade," Mackey replied.
Mackey was off by a year, Fletcher was a freshman in high school, but Moran was transfixed. He spent the next several months working to get Fletcher into the school. Schwartz and Kramer paid the tuition and Fletcher immediately joined the basketball team that went on to win two state titles.
But the most fortuitous event might have occurred his senior year when he decided to try out for football. The coach, John Storey, put him at linebacker and running back. And on the first play of the first practice scrimmage, Fletcher took a handoff, burst through the line and ran 80 yards for a touchdown.
That he would be a natural football player was not a surprise to many people. Even Isaac and Moran had been telling him he was too aggressive for basketball. Moran would watch him on the court, pushing defenders, struggling to fit within the confines of the game and believed he needed a bigger field.
Still, Fletcher was determined to play basketball. He took a scholarship to St. Francis, a small Division I school in rural Pennsylvania, but didn't enjoy his time there. There were more problems at home and he felt he was needed in Cleveland, so after a year he returned and once again called Schwartz and Kramer for tuition money, this time at John Carroll University, an academically acclaimed college just outside Cleveland that played Division III sports.
By his second year at John Carroll, he had given up basketball and was playing football full time. He graduated with a sociology degree in the spring of 1998 and had a job lined up with a firm that did corporate relocations. Then the St. Louis Rams called.
After his first Rams minicamp, it was clear he had won over Vermeil, the team's coach. "I love the underdog," Vermeil said.
By the end of training camp the player who was considered the most outlandish of possibilities was not only a regular on the Rams' special teams, he was the special teams captain.
