As a left-handed pitcher

Dressed in Badgers football swag,

Dr. Steven Shin is stumped.

on the Waubonsie Valley High School baseball team in suburban Chicago, Fumagalli gripped the ball with his middle and ring fingers and stabilized it with his thumb. He was able to get wicked movement on a ball hitters had trouble tracking.He was a legitimate college prospect in the sport, which partly explains why big-time football programs weren't knocking his door down with scholarship offers. He missed some recruiting opportunities in football, including Wisconsin's Junior Day, because of baseball commitments.His focus in high school was on the round ball -- he thought about a career in baseball often -- until growth plate surgery on his left elbow forced him to turn his full attention to football as a junior. At 6-foot-4, height was never an issue, but his weight hovered around 200 pounds and Big Ten recruiters had trouble imagining him filling out that lanky frame.All the MAC schools were after him, including Northern Illinois, and other small schools like Western Kentucky had offered him full rides for football. But Fumagalli's heart was set on the power conferences, whose teams' interest in him was tepid at best.It was all so perplexing to Fumagalli, who was all-state in baseball and football and saw first-hand how he could compete at the highest level with the likes of O.J. Howard at a high school Under Armour combine he attended in Florida his junior year."I told (recruiters at the Big Ten schools), 'You guys are making a big mistake here," said Waubonsie Valley football coach Paul Murphy. "He was playing two sports and was still growing. He had this baby face and wasn't even shaving yet; he had no hair on his legs. I said, 'You guys can't project what he's gonna look like in a year or two from now? When he's in your weight program, when he's on your food table, you can't project what this kid is gonna look like?' " Only two large schools were offering any kind of assistance: North Carolina State put a full-ride offer on the table and Wisconsin was offering a grayshirt opportunity (delayed school entry, one year as a walk-on, three on scholarship). At the time, the Badgers had 10 tight ends on their roster and had used their last TE scholarship on T.J. Watt, who eventually would switch to outside linebacker, a position he now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers.Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, a former Badgers assistant, recruited Fumagalli hard as the head coach at Northern Illinois, and when he got the N.C. State job in late 2012, he offered Fumagalli a full ride, with the caveat that the family get back to him with an answer in seven days or the offer would be null and void.By all accounts, it was a grueling decision for Fumagalli, who had fallen in love with the Wisconsin campus on a visit to Madison with his mother. In the end, there wasn't much of a decision to be made because six days in, the offer from N.C. State was prematurely pulled off the table.Paul Fumagalli says Troy had just switched cell phones and Doeren, with other players he was considering waiting in the wings, was unable to reach Troy to get an answer and had to move forward without him. Meanwhile, Fumagalli had already informed the Wisconsin coaching staff he was going to accept Doeren's offer. Murphy says when he found out it had been pulled, he personally got on the phone with Coach Andersen and asked if the grayshirt deal was still available at Wisconsin. Andersen, whose son Chasen was going through a similar recruiting ordeal at the time, said the offer was still valid."I immediately called Troy and said, 'Get your butt up to Wisconsin and have a hell of a career," Murphy said.In the back of his mind, Murphy wonders how much, if anything, Fumagalli's missing finger had to do with the light recruitment of his star player. Schools already saw a kid who they weren't sure would ever be able to fill out his frame. And now they could never be certain his dominant hand wouldn't become an issue at the next level either, even though it was never one in high school."Nobody outwardly ever said that to me but when you look back at it, probably," Murphy said. "How can this kid play football with nine fingers, you know? When people are short-sighting other people because of a perceived disability, shame on them."Fumagalli, 22, sits relaxed in a leather chair in one of the Wisconsin football offices overlooking Camp Randall Stadium. He's showing off some old war wounds on his right hand -- a large smile-shaped scar on the backside from an injury that required 30 stitches after he was stepped on by a teammate's cleats, and a broken thumb that needed surgery.The subject turns to The Catch, the one that helped earn him MVP honors in the 2016 Cotton Bowl. He's seen it "20 times or so" because he says fans are constantly sending it to him on social media , and readily admits, "I don't know how I caught it."The Catch is quite remarkable for several reasons. First, it came in a clutch moment on third down. Second, he was being held on the play by a Western Michigan defender. Third, his 6-foot-6, 248-pound frame was outstretched, extended nearly horizontal with the ground. Lastly, he hauled it in with one hand -- his left hand with the missing digit -- securing it with just his three fingers and thumb.To his teammates and coaches, however, it was business as usual. Ferguson admitted it was "a great catch, even by Troy's standards," but at the same moment, "I was like, he does that to us in practice all the time.""You love it in the moment and appreciate it. I mean, that was on third down, all those are big," added Chryst. "But there's nothing that says, 'I can't believe he did that.' Maybe that's not fair to him, but it's the truth."Not fair, perhaps, but one of the highest compliments you can pay one of your players. And Chryst knows a thing or two about tight ends. A former tight end himself, he's developed five of them into elite prospects and productive NFL players, including Owen Daniels (Round 4, 2006), Travis Beckum (Round 3, 2009), Garrett Graham (Round 4, 2010) and Lance Kendricks (Round 2, 2011) at Wisconsin, and Tim Euhus (Round 4, 2004) at Oregon State.And how does Fumagalli compare?"Fum's putting himself in that conversation," Chryst said. "He's a really good one. Is he the best? ... I think he's capable of being special."Immediately following his Cotton Bowl performance -- on a family vacation at the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort in Fort Lauderdale -- Fumagalli contemplated leaving school early and entering the draft, but in his heart, he knew he wasn't ready. He hadn't asked for a grade from the NFL Draft Advisory Board, but other information he was receiving placed him on Day 3 in a draft loaded with top tight ends like Howard, David Njoku and Evan Engram.Instead, he returned to Madison to get "bigger, stronger, faster," as he put it; complete his degree in finance, investment and banking; and compete for a national championship with all of his teammates who entered the program with him four years earlier.He increased his catch totals in each of his first three seasons -- from 14 as a freshman to 28 as a sophomore to 47 in 2016 -- and finished his senior year with 46. He also greatly improved his blocking each year -- both in the run game and in pass pro -- and has turned himself into what Chryst refers to as a "real" tight end.After his junior season, Fumagalli wanted to work on the intellectual part of his game, so he met regularly with defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard, a former walk-on safety at Wisconsin who spent 10 years in the NFL with six different teams. While Chryst encourages cross-over meetings between players on one side of the ball and coaches on the other, it doesn't always happen. It takes special effort on the player's part to want it enough, and for Fumagalli, it paid dividends."He's doing a really nice job of finding the soft spot in defenses, and noticing pre-snap what coverages the defense is in, knowing where the weak spots of that defense are," outside linebacker Garret Dooley said in September. "I think in his mind he still believes he has a lot to prove. He knows he can go out there and bebest tight end in the nation."Despite more than 20 years of clinical experience, the director of hand surgery at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles and hand consultant for almost every L.A. pro sports team as well as USC football, is having trouble coming up with another college or pro sports case similar to Fumagalli's.In football, there have been players who have had to adapt following accidents or injuries to their fingers that required full or partial amputations. Shin mentions Jason Pierre-Paul, the New York Giants' pass-rushing phenom who in 2014 had a Fourth of July fireworks accident that cost him his entire right index finger and part of his thumb."Closest comparison I can think of," Shin says. In 1986, Ronnie Lott famously chose to have his left pinkie amputated just above the first joint rather than undergo reconstructive surgery that would have required him to miss time on the field.Tom Dempsey was born without fingers on his right hand and toes on his right foot. He is the kicker whose 63-yard field goal in 1970 for the Saints was an NFL record that stood for 43 years. His modified shoe with a flattened toe surface was eventually outlawed by the league.In baseball, there's pitcher Jim Abbott, the Michigan product who reached All-Star status in the Major Leagues despite the absence of his right, non-throwing hand; and Mordecai Brown, who lost the index finger on his dominant hand in a farm accident when he was a boy but threw a nasty curveball in the majors for 13 years in the early 1900s.Of course, there's Shaquem Griffin, the UCF linebacker whose missing hand has become a big story in his attempt to get drafted in the same class as Fumagalli. Griffin, too, was born with Amniotic Band Syndrome and had his hand amputated when he was just 4 years old.That's the short list. And really, none of them -- with perhaps Dempsey and Brown as the closest -- compare to Fumagalli, whose missing digit is crucial to almost everything he does as a tight end.But "crucial" is a relative word. Because the amputation occurred just 24 hours after he was born, Fumagalli doesn't know what he doesn't know. He has been adapting literally since the day he was born.In his world, the only crucial fingers are the ones he owns."Does he know how to catch it without (his index finger)?" Chryst asks rhetorically. "That's what's cool with people with -- it's a relative term -- but people with disabilities. He knows no other way. The power of will … it blows your mind."Fumagalli is asked if he ever wished he had an index finger on his left hand."Nah," he answers, "it probably would just get in the way."