As a pitcher for Columbia's baseball team, he once struck out 19 batters from Vancouver High School, setting a Portland Interscholastic League single-game record.
[1][2] In 1911, he signed a professional baseball contract with a team in Spokane, but he refused to report, opting to attend the University of Notre Dame instead.
[1] Fitzgerald also played left forward for the 1910 Columbia basketball team that won the Portland Interscholastic League championship.
Every year between 15 and 20 go there, where working short hours they keep in good condition by swimming and boating, and are in splendid shape to hit into hard football practice in the early Fall.
He was selected as the captain of Notre Dame's 1915 football team that compiled a 7–1 record – the sole loss a 20–19 defeat to Nebraska.
After four years of success in meeting the difficulties of the mathematics classes and the other troubles of the engineers, he has succumbed (according to rumor) to the charms of one of the fair ones in the neighboring city.
[11] In 1918, Fitzgerald's professional football career was interrupted by military service after the United States entered World War I.
[12] After the war, Fitzgerald signed with the Rock Island Independents of the American Professional Football Association (predecessor to the NFL).