Wholly inspired: Larry Fitzgerald is the product of special forces--physical and emotional, collegial and professional, individual and familial--that have shaped him into an NFL-ready receiver and polished person at age 20.(NFL)

He is a lesson in complexity. He is a dual argument for heredity and environment. He is gloves and genetics and Dennis Green and the guys from the Minnesota Vikings. He is Minneapolis and Valley Forge Military Academy and the University of Pittsburgh. He is a refined product of the laboratory that was the Vikings' practice field as a team ballboy. He is the rough edges of two deaths too close, last April and June, first his mother, then a teammate.

Larry Fitzgerald is the compressed, pressurized, stone-cold, high first-round lock who emerged from this petri dish of ... well, what do you call all this? There were physical, mental, visceral, emotional, collegial, ...