Suns super fan Mr. ORNG honors late mom’s last wish
Mr. ORNG rose to NBA stardom this past season appearing in two of the league’s commercials to promote their 75th anniversary.
He’s Peoria High School head basketball coach Patrick Battillo by day. At Suns games, he’s the noticeable orangepainted fan mascot who dons a spikyhaired wig and matching headband or orange fedora with a Mr. ORNG-embroidered blazer.
“You can’t even go eat, even when he’s not in his whole (Mr. ORNG) getup, they know him,” Battillo’s sister Cynthia Bogat said.
But Battillo and his family have dealt with two tragedies within the past year. His father Bob Battillo was in a serious car accident in Phoenix that has left him hospitalized in a rehab facility since the Suns’ opening night on Oct. 20. And his mother Carol Mead passed away on June 14 after her third bout with cancer.
She battled skin cancer once and breast cancer twice.
During her wake in Peoria on July 2, Mead’s beloved Elvis Presley music, Betty Boop item, and her wearing an orange Devin Booker jersey in her open casket were her final mementos for attendees.
Battillo said that his mother whimsically told him in multiple conversations she wanted to be laid to rest wearing a Booker jersey. But she never met the Suns All-Star and never wore his jersey during her life.
Battillo thought obliging her final wish would come long after the 25-yearold Booker ends his career. Not at age 60.
“The family knew her passion, love and request, and so, that’s what we did,” Battillo said.
Since Booker’s first Suns press conference appearance after he was drafted in 2015 out of Kentucky, Mead viewed Booker as team’s greatest hope during their worst decade in franchise history from 2011 to 2020.
“He was like, ‘I’m here to win,’” Battillo said about Booker’s initial message as a rookie. “And especially his early years when we weren’t winning and still his resilience of not wanting to give up, not wanting to leave.”
Battillo, 35, said his mother’s passion for Booker soared thereafter.
“When I’m backstage after games he just stops for every single fan and takes his time. What you see in the media, of course, he gets ejected at a game on the road and he still stops for fans. Just that whole piece of him and that competitive nature he brings had my mom just fell in love with him as a player and a man.”
His sister cited Booker’s swarthy, handsome complexion factored in their mother’s obsession for him.
Battillo added that his siblings are Suns fans as well, but not at the level like himself and his mom. Especially her
Booker fandom, for which he would send his mother photos of Booker at the start of all their playoff home and road games he attended the past two years.
“She always wanted to see Devin,” Battillo said. “So every game I arrived and Devin’s shooting around coming out to warm up, I’d take pictures and send them to her.”
Battillo’s entire sports life has been colored orange. He’s the middle child born between his sister and younger brother William Battillo.
Battillo’s mother became a Suns fan after she and her family moved to Peoria in 1994, the year after the team reached the NBA finals for the second time in franchise history.
“It was the excitement when we got to Arizona. That was the Barkley era and that ran the town here. So being a sports fan once we moved here, that was a nobrainer,” Battillo said. “There was no (Diamondbacks) baseball. She was a diehard Mets fan and the Cardinals weren’t even a thing. …
“The passion that the Valley had for the Suns is what made her kind of fall in love, and it just went to another level when I started Mr. ORNG,” Battillo said.
Battillo said she went to just 10 Suns games during her life, including a few with him after he created his Mr. ORNG character in 2012. She was equally passionate bowler and basketball junkie. Mead avidly watched recordings of Suns games because she worked evening shifts as a manager at Peoria’s Sierra Winds senior living facility.
Like Battillo, she remained loyal to the team during its lowly decade as one of the league’s worst teams, missing the postseason from 2011-2020.
“She was just all in, all Suns. Many of those years for about a decade we were not good and weren’t winning many games. But she would still just remain positive, upbeat, supportive just cheering for the team, but very passionate as she watched.”