D.J. Bowers and Joey Harris are back together on the baseball diamond. As kids, they always loved to play the game, hoping someday they'd be in the pros. Now, all these years later, the dream still lives for both of them, even if the path isn't the one they expected.

On a broiling Sunday, Bowers was pitching for the Gainesville Braves, a local semi-pro baseball team. He threw four good innings, then moved to shortstop for the remainder of the game. Harris, about to get in his car to return to Florida International University, did not suit up, although he had been playing first base for the Braves for the last two months. In the brilliant heat, he considered the baking clay infield and smiled.

“I decided to play this summer to see if I could get ready to try to walk on to the baseball team at FIU,” he said.

Harris is currently moving from tight end to defensive end for the FIU Golden Panthers. For someone who has played baseball his entire life, but only two and a half seasons of football, his scholarship at FIU came as a surprise, though not a shock.

“I think it was mainly a physical thing,” he said.

“They invited me to a camp one summer and I ran a 4.64 40, weighing (at the time) 250 pounds.”

At 6'4” and 240 now, Bowers agrees, Harris is a beast.

The 5'9” Bowers is not a beast, although since graduating Williston High School in 2007, he has filled in well, aided especially by the dedicated program of running and lifting he's adopted since then. Although both Harris and Bowers were high school standouts in baseball – Harris at first base for Chiefland and Bowers pitching for Williston – it was only this summer that they began to think that a return to baseball was possible.

“I was home for two months and D.J. called me about playing on this team,” Harris said.

Nobody knows for sure, but it could be a turning point.

Despite growing up on opposite ends of Levy County, the two played AAU baseball together since they were 12. They played on a team coached by Bowers' dad Rob, then for Williston's Charlie Hilton. Playing on 12 and 13-year-old team called the Stingers was perhaps the happiest time of their lives.

“All the boys had so much fun playing on that team,” Rob Bowers recalls.

Both continued to play AAU all through their school years. Bowers didn't play for Williston schools until high school, due to a coach's rule about mixing AAU with school teams; Harris did. Both had good high school careers, but for various reasons – Harris' ACL tear during his senior football season, Bowers' flawed mechanics on the mound – neither received college offers for baseball.

Harris says his knee is 100 percent rehabbed. Bowers has come back from injury as well, losing 26 pounds in a bout with mono late in 2007 and surgery to repair his right meniscus four months ago. With his current workout, he is bigger, stronger and more flexible than ever.

Harris is waiting on FIU head football coach Mario Cristobal's permission to try out for baseball – as a player, he feels he has a lot to offer both at the plate and in the field.

“I get a lot of walks, as if that takes the threat away,” he laughs.

Truth is, he's always been a good baserunner. He averaged over .300 hitting in high school, and doesn't strike out much.

“I have a good glove – I can play first base,” he says.

“I don't have a pinpoint throw for the close play at third, but I feel like I'm a good enough player that I can keep getting better.”

Bowers, who pitched behind Philadelphia Phillies prospect Jiwan James at Williston, says his flawed mechanics are quickly improving with work. Braves teammate Francisco (C.C.) Reyes, a former St. Louis Cardinals pitching prospect who is in Gainesville getting back in shape after rotator cuff surgery, has taken Bowers under his wing.

“He's totally broken down my motion,” Bowers says of Reyes.

Working three times a week with Reyes, Bowers has curbed wasted motion and converted to a smoother, more powerful follow-through.

“It's like night and day,” Bowers says.

“I've learned so much; I feel so much more relaxed when I play.”

Francisco says he has high hopes for Bowers' return to baseball, as well as for his own, Harris', and any other young player willing to work hard and dedicate himself to improvement.

“Baseball is a beautiful sport,” he said.

“I never think it's fair when a young man finishes high school without an offer and they say he is done as a player. D.J. has time – he needs about six months to a year of the kind of work he's doing now before he's ready to show someone what he can do.”

Bowers says he's ready to put the work in. Harris says he's eager to see if FIU baseball coach Turtle Thomas will take him on.

“With me on football scholarship, it's basically no risk to him,” Harris notes.

Mostly, it's the hope of this golden summer that brings two friends back together.

“In a couple years, I hope I'll be playing baseball somewhere,” Bowers says.

“Hopefully this guy (Harris) will be there with me. We'll see.”