Larry Fitzgerald Jr.: A long way from home

"It's pretty incredible," said Larry Fitzgerald Sr., a longtime sportswriter for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and local radio host. "I'm going to Tampa to cover my 30th Super Bowl. I wasn't expecting to be going there to watch my son."

Thanks to Junior, Senior has quite a story to follow this week. The son is the most electrifying player in a game that features a Cardinals franchise that hasn't won or played for a championship since 1947.

Larry Jr. and quarterback Kurt Warner have led that organization from a bumpy 9-7 regular season to three postseason upsets over Atlanta, Carolina and Philadelphia. Fitzgerald has 23 catches for 419 yards and five touchdowns, each seeming to top the one before in degree of difficulty.

Fitzgerald already has broken San Francisco 49ers legend Jerry Rice's record for receiving yards in a postseason. He tied Rice, Los Angeles Rams Hall of Famer Tom Fears and Randy Moss with an NFL-record three consecutive postseason games of at least 100 yards receiving. Moss achieved the feat in January 2000 and '01 with the Vikings.

"Larry is in a zone right now that we've rarely ever seen for a receiver," said former Vikings receiver Cris Carter, a mentor to Fitzgerald since the latter was a Vikings ballboy. "He and Randy Moss have the best ball skills of any receivers I've ever seen. Their ability to stretch the defense -- Randy with his speed down the field and Larry with his ability to go vertical and get the ball -- put them in a rare category of players the NFL has ever seen."

The King Park Pee Wee

Larry Sr. covered great athletes long before his oldest son was born. He also was a pretty good football player.

A two-way tackle at Chicago's Fenger High School, the 53-year-old Fitzgerald points out that he made the Chicago Tribune's All-Century prep team. It's a honor also bestowed upon a pretty good linebacker named Dick Butkus.

Larry Sr. went to Indian Hills Community College in Centerville, Iowa, and then to Indiana State in Terre Haute, Ind., toward the end of the 1970s. "I was the most famous Larry in Terre Haute when I got there," he said. "Then Larry Bird showed up."

Larry Sr. didn't want Larry or youngest son Marcus playing football at a young age. He was afraid that improper coaching could lead to an injury that would have a long-lasting effect.

"I was doing radio when Larry was 10 and Marcus was 6," Fitzgerald said. "I came home one night and my wife, Carol, had signed them up for Pee Wee football. I wasn't happy."

Carol was the glue that held the Fitzgerald family together. She died of a brain hemorrhage related to her bout with breast cancer on April 10, 2003, at age 47. But, in a lot of ways, she's still holding her three men together. Her voice is still on the answering machine at the family home. And Larry Jr. still carries her last driver's license in his wallet, making sure it always touches his driver's license.

Carol won the Pee Wee battle and the boys took over at King Park. Larry Jr. was one of the best running backs to ever play there. His quarterback was Troy Bell, who became Big East Player of the Year as a basketball standout at Boston College and an NBA first-round draft pick in 2003. Another running back on the team was Alan Anderson, who went on to star as a basketball player at DeLaSalle High School and Michigan State.

"We ran the wing-T," Fitzgerald Jr. said Friday. "It was just misdirection, hand the ball off to us and go."

Larry Sr. said his son seemed to glide past his peers. It was, he said, almost as if "Larry was on water skis and everybody else was in heavy spikes."

Once Larry Sr. realized just how gifted Larry Jr. was, he tried to keep it a secret from him.

"I didn't want it to go to his head," Larry Sr. said.

Larry Jr. didn't get a big head. But he knew he was no ordinary athlete.

"I set myself some lofty goals pretty early on," he said before the Cardinals played host to the Vikings last month. "I've always been one to shoot for the stars. You can never dream big enough. If you aren't playing the game to be great and win championships, I don't know why you're playing it."

Big loss, big decision

The Fitzgeralds sent Larry to Minnehaha Academy for his freshman year of high school.

"I remember he had very big feet," Minnehaha football coach Ron Monson said with a laugh. "Size 13 or 14."

Fitzgerald began the season as a cornerback on the school's "B" team. By midseason, he was promoted to the Redhawks varsity, where he also played some receiver and quarterback.

"He was a very good cornerback," Monson said. "Once, against Holy Angels, he got turned around and the ball was thrown. Somehow, he managed to catch the ball behind his back. Just reached back and pinned it to his lower back. Amazing."

Minnehaha wasn't very good in football. In fact, Fitzgerald and his Minnehaha teammates got beat by DeLaSalle 79-0.

"I remember walking back to the car with my wife and saying, 'Baby, I have to get him out of there,' " Larry Sr. said. "As competitive as he is, he can't make it there. There was no chance to win."

Larry Sr. was playing golf at Theodore Wirth not long after that. Between the first and 10th tees is a school bus stop. He was walking past the stop when he looked up and recognized the driver as Fred Bell, Troy's father.

"Troy had gone to Holy Angels," Larry Sr. said. "We started talking about Holy Angels. Talk about perfect timing. It was incredible timing."

Larry Jr. soon was on his way to Richfield to play for the Academy of Holy Angels.

From linebacker to receiver

Holy Angels coach Mike Pendino said he didn't know Larry Fitzgerald Jr. "from the man flying to the moon" when the Fitzgeralds showed up at the school the summer before Larry's sophomore year.

It was hot evening. Holy Angels players were lifting weights. Pendino was talking to Larry's parents, but could see Larry in the background catching footballs on the practice field.

"This is the God's honest truth," Pendino said. "I walked up to Ray Betton, who was an assistant at the time, and I said, 'You will never coach another kid that's better than this one.' You could just tell by the way he carried himself."

Holy Angels had older players at receiver. Pendino didn't believe it was fair to bench them, so Fitzgerald became an outside linebacker. Pendino remembers that Fitzgerald's hands were so strong, "once he got them on you, you were tackled."

Betton and Mike Smalley, another assistant at the time, spent most of the season watching Fitzgerald make circus catches while messing around in practice. They tried to get Pendino to put Fitzgerald in a game at receiver.

John Stocco, who would go on to be a three-year starter at quarterback for Wisconsin, was a freshman at the time. Finally, as Holy Angels was getting beat handily in a playoff game in St. Michael, Pendino relented and agreed to send in Fitzgerald at receiver.

"Larry goes in and makes this one-handed catch in the end zone for a touchdown," Smalley said. "It was spectacular. Ray and I just started glaring at [Pendino]."

That was the moment Fitzgerald officially and finally became a full-time receiver, although he also continued to play defense with the Stars.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald also was using his dad's access to the Vikings and friendship with then-coach Dennis Green as a developmental tool. As a Vikings ballboy, he studied Moss, Carter and Jake Reed. Carter reached out to him as a mentor.

"He was always there for me," Fitzgerald Jr. said last month. "Whenever I would call him, he'd pick up my calls. When you see guys like that and you get to know them, it can only make you better. I just remember watching all those great plays in practice and wishing and hoping and praying every day that I would be in that position one day."

Fitzgerald was a ballboy 10 years ago when the Vikings were 15-1 and seemingly destined for the Super Bowl in Miami. They were upset at home by the Falcons.

"I'm still hurt by that loss to the Falcons," Fitzgerald said last month. "My dad was going to take me to the Super Bowl that year."

Ten years later, his dad will be interviewing him at the Super Bowl.

Taking discipline to new heights

While Fitzgerald's athletic career took off, his academics went south. He went from being a 'B' student early in his freshman year at Minnehaha to a 'D' student at Holy Angels.

"Larry struggled in the classroom, there's no secret about that," Smalley said. "Then his mother was diagnosed with cancer when Larry was [a freshman]. It was a tough time for him."

With 32 Division I-A scholarship offers and tumbling grades, the Fitzgeralds reached for an unconventional solution: military school. Larry would leave his friends, and Holy Angels, in December of his senior year and move to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa. Former Vikings defensive end Chris Doleman, who went to Valley Forge in 1981, was one of the people who recommended the school to Larry Sr.

Those familiar with Larry Jr. when he was growing up say attitude never was a problem. He was kind, respectful and well-mannered. He usually made the right decisions, and when he didn't, well ...

"My dad used to give me a lot of spankings," Fitzgerald said last week. "Anything I did wrong, he was on me all the time. I was raised by a strict disciplinarian. He laid down the law."

On one of his first nights at Valley Forge, Larry went to bed hungry. His dinner was thrown out before he had a chance to eat. At Valley Forge, you have 30 minutes to eat. If you put your elbows on the table during dinner, you have to stand at attention for 10 minutes before you can resume eating. Larry put his elbows on the table, stood for 10 minutes and sat back down. He put his elbows on the table again. After standing another 10 minutes, dinner time was over.

Fitzgerald wasn't a big hit on the football field his first day, either.

"He didn't catch a ball the whole day," Valley Forge coach Mike Muscella said. "Balls bouncing off his hands, off his facemask. I had an assistant coach come up and say, 'I thought you said this kid was good.' I said, 'Just wait.' Larry was fighting the ball that day. That was the last time he ever fought the ball."

Fitzgerald said he learned a valuable lesson that day.

"I still take it with me to this day," Fitzgerald said Friday. "That's what happens when you let outside things affect you. I didn't want to be there. I was homesick. When I stepped on the football field, my mind wasn't focused on what it needed to be focused on, and that was playing ball."

In the classroom, Fitzgerald did enough in his 18 months at Valley Forge to be admitted to the University of Pittsburgh in 2002.

Pitt stands behind Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald used to dream about going to Penn State. He and some friends took an unofficial visit there after their junior year at Holy Angels.

They also stopped by Pittsburgh to watch a Panthers passing camp. Fitzgerald immediately liked what he saw of then-coach Walt Harris and his offense.

"Larry came back to our summer camp later," Harris said. "You knew in a heartbeat that the kid was unbelievable. The body control, the ability to time his jump perfectly, the fearless way he went after the ball."

The first pass Harris saw thrown to Fitzgerald during that summer camp was uncatchable. Or so Harris thought.

"It was a deep ball 10 yards outside his zone; a terrible pass," Harris said. "He faded under the ball, jumped and made the catch. All the coaches, we turned to each other and said, 'Wow.' "

Until the past month, the biggest "wow" moment of Fitzgerald's career came in 2003, his second and final season at Pitt. Texas A&M was the victim of seven catches for 135 yards and touchdowns of 34, 5 and 49 yards. One of the scores came when Fitzgerald outjumped three A&M defenders.

Fitzgerald finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting and was the third overall draft pick by Arizona in 2004. In five seasons, he has made three Pro Bowls; this season, he was named first-team All-Pro for the first time.

"Larry has an unbeatable combination: tremendous talent and the desire to be the greatest to ever play,' " said Tyler Palko, Fitzgerald's best friend and former Pitt teammate and roommate. "The great catches you guys see on TV now, we've seen a lot better ones in practice.

"His last year at Pitt, he tore a ligament in his hand. He only told the trainer, but I was his roommate, so I knew. He went that entire year catching balls in practice with one hand. And he never dropped one."

Fitzgerald said he's far from being what he would call a dominant player. But he's a rarity in the NFL: a humble receiver who still considers himself a work in progress. Certainly, what he does next week will help define his career.

"To be considered a great player, it's mandatory -- mandatory -- that you win big football games," Fitzgerald said last month. "I'm not talking about regular-season games and putting up big numbers. At the end of the day, that's all nice and everything, but it's only a footnote in the media guide.

"What matters is winning big playoff games consistently. You have to be your greatest in the biggest moments."

So far, so good for the kid who got his start at King Park alongside Nicollet Avenue 15 years ago.