By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

Growing up in Greensboro, N.C., D.J. Reader loved to play sports. In fact, he liked to play just about anything, but one certain sport started growing on him when he was a little boy. That sport was baseball.

Reader loved playing baseball because he could. Being that he has always been a big guy the local recreation department in his hometown would not allow him to play football because of it.

“I was more of a baseball guy because I could not make the weight limits for recreation league football so I started playing a lot of baseball,” he said.

Reader’s passion for baseball led him to a solid high school career, where he batted .529 during his junior year at Grimsley High School. He was clocked throwing a baseball 92 miles per hour last year.

“We just have not seen enough yet to tell you what he is capable of doing,” Clemson head baseball coach Jack Leggett said. “I kind of got excited about him offensively the last couple of days. For a big young man, he is very loose, but he has not played baseball in a long period of time and in the summer and fall he got behind in the repetition, but he picks things up quickly and he has some snap in his hands. He is very strong as you know.

“Being 300-plus pounds does not seem to bother his flexibility. He has some looseness in his hands that as a hitter you want to have. We are going to watch him real closely in the next couple of weeks and see where it goes.”

But as good as he was in baseball, Reader excelled on the gridiron. Once he was able to get on the football field, he became one of the best athletes in the state of North Carolina. At Grimsley he excelled as an offensive guard and defensive tackle and became a SuperPrep All-American after recording 50 tackles, seven tackles for loss and five sacks as a senior.

His football prowess got the attention of Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney and ultimately brought him to Clemson. And though Reader is a football player by trade, his passion lies with baseball, which is ultimately why he chose to play college football at Clemson.

“My decision to come here was influenced a lot by baseball,” he said. “Baseball was on board and I felt that (football and baseball) had a good relationship so it was a good choice for me to come here.”

And the Clemson football program has already benefited from his choice. This past season, Reader grew as a defensive tackle under the tutelage of defensive line coach Dan Brooks. The freshman played in all 13 games for the Tigers, while registering 40 tackles, including a season-high seven in 27 snaps against Virginia Tech.

“D.J. is a strong kid. He is tremendously coachable,” Leggett said.

Leggett found out how coachable on the first day of practice last Saturday. When he noticed Reader was struggling to make contact, the Clemson coach went over and offered some tips and coached him up. When they practiced again on Sunday, Leggett noticed Reader retained what he taught him.

“He has got better. He makes quick adjustments,” Leggett said. “A couple of days ago we had the breaking ball machine out here and he had trouble making contact with it and then the next day he had a little better contact and then the next day a lot better contact.”

Reader says he doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone, he just wants to be a part of the team and help Clemson baseball get to where it wants to go.

Since he is with the baseball team and has been conditioning with them since the football season ended, Reader says he has not worked out with the football team since the Chick-fil-A Bowl. He plans to meet with Swinney in the next few weeks so they can get a plan on what his schedule will be for the two sports.

“What’s probably going to happen is that I will end up going to practice and double up on most days,” he said. “I’ll try to do both baseball and football on the same day… He has not said anything yet, but if Coach Swinney wants something done, he will voice it so I’m just waiting to hear from him.”

As for now, Reader is just adjusting to baseball, especially how different the game is played compared to high school.

“It was really difficult. You are out here with college pitchers,” he said. “I have probably not seen pitches over 85 since I was a junior in high school. It was a really hard adjustment and it was really tough to make.

“Hopefully, I can keep getting better.”

Because he sits at 6-foot-3 and weighs 305 pounds, the biggest adjustment for the baseball staff has been finding clothes that are big enough for Reader to fit into. The pants and the jerseys have been taken care of, now he waits for his size 15 spikes, which are on order.

How ironic? Now his size is slowing up his growth as a baseball player, but only for a day or two.

“He is one of those guys that seem to have good aptitude for learning,” Leggett said. “He is a coachable young man. He is a great kid. The kids like having him around so we will see where it takes us.

“I don’t want to put the expectations too high and feel like we are going to fill the stands because we have a football/baseball player out here. D.J. is a great kid. We are going to give him the opportunity to show us what he can do and make some decisions on whether he has a future in baseball here.

“Right now we have an open mind about it and he showed me some things yesterday that we are anxious to see today.”