Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #48 : From Penn State Hero to Flushing Footnote: D.J. Dozier’s Remarkable Journey

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum cards and game-used jerseys of the guys who made you squint and go, “Wait… didn’t he play for us?” Last week, we spotlighted the slime-soaked, neon-splattered Nickelodeon crossover era, a chapter of Mets lore so bizarre you’d swear it was dreamed up by a pack of sugar-fueled 10-year-olds who’d just mainlined Fruit Gushers and were ready to pitch ideas straight to the Cartoon Network executives.

This week, though, we’re steering the time machine in a completely different direction—away from Double Dare obstacles and green goo, and toward one of the rarest figures ever to put on a Mets uniform: a true two-sport pro who managed to play on Sundays in the NFL and then turn around and patrol a major league outfield. Yes, class, today we turn our attention to DJ Dozier, one of the most fascinating athletes ever to step onto the Shea Stadium grass.

Dozier’s story begins long before he was a curiosity in Flushing. Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia, he was one of those kids who didn’t just excel at sports—he seemed to leapfrog them. By age 12, he’d already had a run-in with destiny when he starred in a city basketball championship because the other team’s best player—some tall, skinny kid named David Robinson—was home with the mumps. From there, Dozier became a local legend at Kempsville High and then a star at Penn State, where he delivered one of the biggest touchdowns in school history: the game-winner in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl that cemented the Nittany Lions’ national title over Miami.

The Vikings took him in the first round that spring, and for five seasons in Minnesota and Detroit, he carved out the kind of NFL career that doesn’t make headlines but fills coaches’ notebooks with admiration—4.0 yards per carry, only four fumbles in five years, and a perfect 158.3 passer rating thanks to his lone career pass going for a touchdown. He returned kicks, moved chains, and earned respect.

But there are athletes who fit neatly in one sport, and then there are the restless ones—the ones who keep a second dream tucked just behind the first. For Dozier, baseball never stopped calling. The Tigers originally drafted him in 1983, but he passed for college football. It took until 1990 for fate—and the Mets—to scoop him back up. The Mets signed him as an amateur free agent, hoping the athleticism that made him a first-round NFL pick could translate to the diamond. In St. Lucie that summer, he showed flashes of exactly that: 33 steals, 13 homers, and enough power-speed intrigue to make scouts lean forward in their folding chairs. He climbed the ladder through Williamsport and eventually to Flushing, where on May 6, 1992, he made his Mets debut—one of the extremely few times in franchise history that a player had just finished a career taking handoffs in the NFL before tracking fly balls at Shea.

His numbers in the big leagues were modest—.191 in 25 games with four steals—but context matters. Hitting big league pitching after five years of studying blitz packages isn’t easy. Dozier himself later admitted that left-handed changeups were his personal Kryptonite, and honestly, half the league could say the same. Still, he was a smooth defender, made only one error, ran well, and carried himself like someone who truly belonged on a diamond. And that’s the part that makes him such a perfect subject for Forgotten Faces of Flushing. The Mets have had their superstars, their icons, their miracle-makers. But very few Mets have come through the clubhouse carrying the résumé of a national championship hero, NFL running back, and legitimate baseball prospect all rolled into one.

Zoom out far enough and Dozier’s place in sports history looks even more interesting. The pantheon of two-sport legends—Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, Brian Jordan, Dave DeBusschere, Gene Conley—is a tiny club, a selective fraternity of athletes who seemed to ignore the limits the rest of us politely adhere to. Dozier wasn’t as flashy as Bo or as electric as Deion, but that’s precisely what makes his career compelling. He represents the everyman version of the two-sport dream: someone who willed himself into two professional leagues not through mythic talent alone, but through persistence, competitiveness, curiosity, and the belief that you shouldn’t have to choose just one dream if you’re willing to work hard enough to chase both.

After his baseball chapter—and after the Mets traded him with Wally Whitehurst and Raul Casanova for Tony Fernández—Dozier did something even more impressive: he reinvented himself again. He became an entrepreneur and innovator in the sports-tech world, working with NFL, MLB, and Premier League clubs, consulting, building, and thinking about sports in ways that echo the discipline and adaptability that carried him through two professional careers. In interviews, he speaks with the same forward lean he once showed bursting through the line of scrimmage. “Success doesn’t knock on your door,” he says. “You’ve got to knock on it. And if it doesn’t open, you knock it down.” If there were ever a quote that summed up a man who played in the NFL, reached the majors, and built an entire business life afterward, that’s it.

And that’s why DJ Dozier belongs here in Sunday School. Not because he was a star. Not because he was a stat-sheet monster. But because his story is distinctly, defiantly memorable—a life lived with motion, ambition, and a refusal to stay in one lane. In the grand attic of Mets history, full of forgotten jerseys and faded Topps cards, his is one that deserves to be dusted off and held up to the light.