San Diego, CA
Bryce Miller, Union-Tribune sports columnist and outdoorsman, dies at 56
Bryce Miller, who for a decade told stories of San Diegans’ successes and failures, trials and triumphs as the Union-Tribune’s sports columnist, died Saturday. He was 56.
Miller was diagnosed with muscle-invasive bladder cancer two years ago and wrote regularly for the Union-Tribune as he underwent treatment. His final column, about San Diego FC coach Mikey Varas, appeared in the Feb. 23 print edition.
An avid outdoorsman since his childhood in Iowa, Miller viewed San Diego first with an outsider’s awe before becoming a true local. He fished off the Coronado Islands, stalked the backstretch at Del Mar and was as comfortable in the Padres’ clubhouse as he was at an outdoors expo.
His coverage of the 2017 Lilac fire, which killed at least 46 horses at San Luis Rey Downs and burned their caretakers, earned Miller the 2019 Eclipse Award, given annually to the best horse racing writing by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
“Bryce was an insightful columnist, a keen observer of the human condition and a masterful storyteller who easily won the trust of others — whether they were sources, strangers or stars,” said Lora Cicalo, the Union-Tribune’s editor. “But more than any of those things, he was a truly exceptional human being — generous, kind and unfailingly approachable — as anyone who crossed paths with him would attest.”
A superb storyteller
As the U-T’s sports columnist, Miller told stories of San Diegans at their highest — and lowest.
Miller stood on the White House’s South Lawn last July, when Point Loma Nazarene’s women’s soccer team was hailed by Vice President Kamala Harris for winning the Division II national championship. Days later, he was in the Nationals Park press box as Dylan Cease threw the second no-hitter in Padres history.
Miller was in the champagne-soaked clubhouse after the Padres slayed the Dodgers in the 2022 National League Division Series, and again when they beat the Braves in October’s wild-card series.
(Experience elsewhere meant Miller had a plan to stay dry; Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon’s errant champagne spray had ruined one of Miller’s tape recorders in the aftermath of Boston’s curse-breaking World Series title in 2004.)
Miller followed SDSU’s men’s basketball team all the way through its 2023 NCAA Tournament run. When Lamont Butler’s jump shot beat Florida Atlantic and moved San Diego State to the national championship game, Miller put it in proper perspective.
“The nation wondered aloud if a team that valued defense first and always could climb past offensive obstacles to summit the ‘One Shining Moment’ mountaintop,” he wrote. “They debated whether San Diego, the sports bridesmaid still hunting for the white dress, was doomed to getting close without a cigar in sight.”
Miller’s gripping story about the Lilac fire and its aftermath was among his best work while at the Union-Tribune.
Miller prided himself on his versatility. He wrote about marathoners, endurance athletes, animals of all stripes — and one Tiger. (His column on golfer Tiger Woods from the relocated Genesis Invitational was published last month).
“Pretty much anything I asked him to do, he was willing to try,” said Jay Posner, who retired as the Union-Tribune’s sports editor in 2022. “I don’t think he knew much about horse racing when he came here, but he discovered there were good stories at Del Mar, and he enjoyed the chance to tell a good story. He quickly developed relationships there, covered the big races there and elsewhere, and I’ll always remember his incredible work after the Lilac fire.”
Miller flew to Eritrea to tell the story of long-distance runner Meb Keflezighi, a San Diego High School graduate who grew up in the country. He shadowed late Padres owner Peter Seidler as he walked the streets of Pacific Beach, ministering to the homeless.
Miller drew inspiration from those stories as he faced cancer treatment. Former Padres manager Bruce Bochy and Keflezighi were among those who reached out to Miller in recent weeks.
“Lessons like those, unpeeled by spending time with those who are exceptional, resonate in myriad ways,” Miller wrote in August 2023. “Stick to it. Focus on today. Don’t quit. On to the next. Words like those, just words in some ways at the time, have gained significant heft.”
Finding his tribe
Miller grew up in Redfield, Iowa, a no-stoplight town “that, depending on the hour, might top 700” people, he said. He was one of 33 people in his high school’s graduating class.
Miller graduated from the University of Iowa and worked for the Des Moines Register and with USA Today in Arlington, Va., before heading west to San Diego. He was hired in October 2015, an outsider in a city that can sometimes feel insular.
It didn’t take long for Miller to find his tribe.
He made fast friends near his homes in Pacific Beach and, later, Kensington.
A dinner thrown by former Union-Tribune outdoors reporter Jim Brown connected Miller with former U-T columnist Tom Cushman, ex-Padres radio broadcaster Bob Chandler and J. Stacey Sullivan Jr., the attorney who negotiated the Chargers’ move from Los Angeles to San Diego in 1961.
“We joked,” Brown said Saturday, “that he was the son we never knew we had.”
Brown connected Miller with Bochy because of their shared love of the outdoors.
Miller’s deep roster of friends and family were by his bedside in recent weeks, providing updates in the mornings and evenings to his friends from around the world.
Longtime friend Keith Murphy broadcast his Iowa-based “Murph & Andy” radio show from Miller’s hospital earlier this month. An Iowa Hawkeyes pennant hung in his hospital room.
On air, Murphy’s co-host, Andy Fales, called Miller “the minibike of friends.”
“You see Bryce and you’re like, ‘Oh man, I’m about to have some fun,’” Fales said. “He’s not a commuter friend. He’s not the friend that you lean on to get help with your TurboTax. He’s your buddy that you plug into a situation where you know you’re going to have fun, and he just makes it better.”
Murphy posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday that Miller “squeezed so much joy into his 56 years.”
“He did it by saying yes,” Murphy wrote. “Yes to fun. Yes to living. Yes to today. Figure the rest out later.”
A world traveler
Miller loved San Diego, but understood that a big world lay beyond the county line.
Miller covered six Olympics during his journalism career. While at the Union-Tribune, he ventured to Mexico City (twice), the Dominican Republic, Asia and Africa.
He traveled to Seoul, South Korea, last March to cover the Padres’ series with the Dodgers. A month later, he flew to Japan for vacation.
Nothing brought him as much joy (and peace) as his annual fishing trip to Lac Seul in Ear Falls, Ontario, Canada. Every summer for nine years, Miller and friends drove the 10 ½ hours from Minneapolis in pursuit of walleye, pike and smallmouth bass. He wrote that the lake was “as much a cherished friend as a destination.”
It took on added importance in June, during what would be his final trip.
“When your world includes near-weekly lab visits, chemotherapy treatments, a bathroom cabinet bulging with pill bottles and side effects that ambush you at every turn,” he wrote, “the rippling water and the riches it holds delivers powerful medicine of its own.”
Writing, starring in stories
Miller wrote stories. But he could star in them, too.
Shortly after moving to San Diego, Miller connected with legendary sports broadcaster Dick Enberg, a longtime La Jolla resident who enjoyed a final act as the Padres’ play-by-play man on television. The two would meet periodically for breakfast near Enberg’s home.
One meeting in particular elicited chuckles nearly a decade later.
Miller, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, watched the team clinch the 2016 World Series championship from a Pacific Beach tavern alongside many of his friends. The celebration continued deep into the night; by the time Miller arrived to meet Enberg the next morning, he was … run down.
Enberg, a baseball junkie himself, understood what a World Series win meant to a Cubs fan. The two agreed to reschedule.
Miller relished spring training trips to Peoria, Ariz., where he and Union-Tribune reporters and photographers would pile into a rented house to cover the Padres.
In 2023, aware there was a Seattle Mariners pitcher named Bryce Miller sharing the Peoria Sports Complex with the Padres, the columnist finagled a sit-down interview.
“In one place this spring there are two Bryce Millers, one a guy who can hit 100 mph on the radar gun and, at age 24, is flirting with a big-league rotation spot. The other, 30 years his elder, typing fingers raw about the Padres on the other side of the Peoria Sports Complex shared by the teams,” he wrote. “One, spry and fit with the world in front of him. The other, wondering if it’s time for that AARP card after all.”
Union-Tribune reporter Kevin Acee traded barbs and one-liners with Miller for years.
“The more I got to know Bryce, the more I liked him,” Acee said. “I teased him mercilessly, and he almost always just shook his head like he couldn’t believe I found myself so funny.”
When the 2024 baseball season ended, Miller and Acee left town and went fishing. It was Acee — not the veteran angler Miller — who caught a fish that day, albeit one barely the size of his palm. When he returned to San Diego, Miller and another angler sent Acee an enlarged photo of his (tiny) catch to mark the occasion.
“Oh, he drove me crazy,” Acee said. “… But he was also unselfish, hard-working and a really good human. He basically taught me how to fish, and I’ll be eternally grateful.”
Opting for understanding
In an age where media personalities often manufacture outrage to attract listeners and clicks, Miller opted for understanding.
His writing was poetic and nuanced and, reflecting the columnist’s personality, never reactionary.
“I’ll remember him for all those stories,” Posner said, “but mainly for just being a really good and kind person.”
Miller adored sports and sportswriting because it brought him closer to people — with all their triumphs and tragedies.
“That’s what you learn, covering all this sports stuff. It’s not really sports. It’s people,” Miller wrote in his final column for the Des Moines Register. “So it stays with you. It sticks to you — heart, mind and all.”
Miller is survived by his brothers, Brian and Bruce, and a sister-in-law, Melissa; his mother, Bea Winters; and friends in Iowa, Kensington and beyond. Services are pending.
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