TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- His backpedal has come a long way since the start of spring practice. He is finding rhythm in his footwork, the steps coming back to him like a familiar dance from the past. Jai Miller isn't making music on the football field yet, but he's finding some of the right chords.

Nick Saban looks on. It's the first day of camp in Tuscaloosa, and already he's seeing the tools come together. Miller, his promising if not unorthodox safety, is finding his groove. Everything about him is encouraging: his maturity, his intelligence, his work ethic, his build. This is someone Saban can work with. This is someone who can do the improbable. He can make good on a second chance.

"He's catching on way faster than I did when I first got here," said safety Ha'Sean Clinton-Dix, a rising junior and likely starter for the Tide. "He's catching on and learning very well and picking up and making a big improvement and change in the secondary."

Miller is still finding his way. There are good days and bad, practices where he drops three interceptions and scrimmages where he makes touchdown-saving tackles. He never thought a return to football would be easy, and so far it hasn't been. You don't show up at Alabama and become a star. You work at it and hope you're at your best when your number is called.

Hope is what football represents for Miller -- a chance to have something at the end of a toilsome journey. Alabama is either the end or the beginning for him, the final chapter of a restless athlete's tale or the start of something special.

Signed, sealed …

He put on a crimson cap, halfway grinning from the side of his mouth. The auditorium at Selma High (Ala.) exploded, his classmates crying out in excitement. He would be the first legitimate multisport athlete to attend the University of Alabama, a steal for then-football coach Mike Price. Reports were sent out: Jai Miller, the state's most dynamic athlete since Bo Jackson, had committed to the Crimson Tide for the 2003 class.

But Miller was playing a game, dropping the Alabama hat from his head. Now his deep-set, wide brown eyes beamed from underneath the brim of an Auburn cap. Stunned, the other half of the auditorium rose, cheering his deception. After all, a bit of theatrics never got in the way of a good rivalry.

Now that he had whipped the crowd into a frenzy, it was time to drop the hammer. He would leave them, the state that bore him, the state that longed for him to stay home and entertain them for just a few more years. He would make this decision for him and no one else.

Jai Miller turned down the opportunity to play football and basketball at Stanford to pursue a career in baseball. Joy R. Absalon/USA TODAY Sports

Miller snatched the Auburn hat away and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a Stanford jersey. He would play basketball and football for the Cardinal, something neither Auburn nor Alabama had a history of accommodating.

It was a tough pill for the hometown crowd to swallow, its favorite son burning the bridge from both ends. He took the road few imagined he would dare travel. He really did want it all, and at Stanford he would have his best chance of getting it -- not just athletics, but the ability to pursue an education that would secure a future absent scoreboards and free agency.

In choosing Stanford, he was doing what he always planned, what he was raised to do. Jai Miller was being his own man.

The fork in the road

The elaborate commitment ceremony was supposed to be final. Then-Stanford basketball coach Mike Montgomery had made a great impression on his official visit, as had former football coach Buddy Teevens, agreeing that there would be time for both sports. Star forward Josh Childress and wide receiver Teyo Johnson took him around campus and sold him on becoming a Cardinal.

The baseball diamond was supposed to be part of Miller's routine his senior year at Selma, a way to wind down the final months before traveling west. He had a passion for the game, but it wasn't where his future was headed.

That was before scouts stumbled on his untapped power at the plate and exceptional range in the outfield. He was a natural, but football and basketball hid him from the limelight because he couldn't make time for the year-round travel teams and tournaments that traditionally showcased prospects.

At a game between Selma and nearby Carver High, a scout came to the ballpark in search of one of Miller's teammates but came up empty. The player he hoped to see had quit to focus on football shortly before he booked his trip. Instead of turning tail, the scout stuck around to see the strong-armed kid destined for Stanford.

In his first plate appearance, Miller hit a towering home run that left the field in the blink of an eye. The scout remained seated.

Boston Red Sox scout and former Alabama baseball assistant Danny Watkins had watched Miller play throughout high school. What he saw of Miller on the baseball diamond was rare but unpolished.

"He was a fantastic athlete, one you could really dream on," Watkins said. "When you look at the five tools it takes to play baseball, he had them all."

Miller hit .500 his senior year and suddenly had another cap to consider. The Florida Marlins took Miller in the fourth round of the amateur draft, baiting him with a six-figure contract.

Now the joke was on Miller. The money was too good to pass up.

At 18 years old with a ticket booked for California, Miller changed course, taking a path he hadn't planned on, a journey that would prod and provoke him for nearly a decade before it spit him back out.

Grief and lessons with it

If there's one thing that stands out about Miller, it's his perseverance. Refusing to accept failure kept him bouncing around the minor leagues for nine years. He couldn't give up. He wouldn't step away from the game on anyone's word other than his own. Football begged him back, but it would have to wait its turn.

Robert Johnson grew up in Montgomery and calls Miller his brother, tracing their friendship back to the elementary school playground. Johnson, who played tight end at Auburn and for three years in the NFL, said he tried countless times to get Miller out of baseball and back to the game he knew best.

It didn't matter that Miller felt he wasn't getting what he wanted out of baseball; he was determined to see it through.

"For a kid like him that lost so much and put so much into it, to not reap the benefits was too much to deal with," Johnson said of Miller's baseball career. "We talked about it every day."

Riding a bus from one empty ballpark to another in the minors wouldn't break Miller. The disappointing back-and-forth trips to the big leagues wouldn't either. There was a drive inside him, a flame lit at birth and nurtured from the time he was old enough to carry a bat or lift a ball.