Written by Doug Goodnough
He’s covered 29 out of the last 30 World Series, interviewing some of the biggest names in Major League Baseball along the way. As a longtime member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, he even has a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame, recently casting his 26th ballot.
Scott Miller, ’85, has made his passion for baseball into a career covering the national pastime. The award-winning journalist and author of two baseball books said he can’t imagine doing anything else.
“I pretty much learned to read by following sports in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press,” said Miller, who was born and raised in Monroe, Michigan. “I followed the Tigers and all the sports in the papers. But, I gravitated toward baseball as my favorite sport. And I loved it. One day, in seventh grade, I was reading the Tigers coverage in the Detroit papers and a light bulb came on: There is a job out there where you can just go cover baseball? From then on, it was eyes on the target. I never wanted to do or be anything else.”
Enrolling at Hillsdale College, he majored in English and joined the staff of The Collegian, serving as the sports editor and then editor during his junior year. Before the start of the last semester of his senior year, newspaper advisor and then-Dean of Women CarolAnn Barker, ’63, approached Miller with an interesting offer.
“She said they needed an interim sports editor for the spring,” Miller said of the opportunity to step in at the nearby Hillsdale Daily News. “So I had to make some arrangements to make sure that I could do this.”
One hurdle was an early morning history class with Professor Arlan Gilbert. Because he had to be at the newspaper by 6:00 a.m. and finish the sports section before noon, Miller needed his mornings free.
“I went to him right as the semester started, and I said, ‘Look, my goal since the seventh grade is to be a baseball writer. I have this opportunity to be interim sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News. But the problem is, I’m there every morning, and that means I have to miss all your classes. Is there any arrangement we can make?’” Miller said of his “pitch” to Gilbert. “He immediately replied, ‘Yes, I know you’re a good student. I trust you to do all the work, and this is going to help you do this.’”
Miller’s “wacky plan” allowed him not only to graduate but also gave him the hands-on newspaper experience that would soon serve him well.
Although he said he felt very prepared going into the journalism world, earning a job as a sportswriter—not to mention an MLB writer—was a challenge. His father, a former high school teacher, eventually was hired as an editorial writer at the Detroit News. During Miller’s junior year of college, his father took a job with the San Diego Union Tribune. Miller moved to California to stay with his family while looking for a full-time sports writing position.
He finally got a break as a part-time sportswriter covering high school sports at the startup Encinitas Coast Dispatch, a twice-weekly newspaper. It gave him an opportunity to “climb the ladder,” which he did for a few years until a position opened up at the Los Angeles Times.
“They had a San Diego edition, and they were adding to their sports part-timers’ staff,” Miller said. He did that for three years and had a chance to cover some college sports, including San Diego State University and a few San Diego Padres baseball games.
In 1990, a full-time position opened covering San Diego State athletics, and the editor remembered Miller’s work.
“He said, ‘We don’t hire our own part-timers, but we’re going to hire you. You’ve really proven yourself,’” Miller said.
Miller spent the next couple of years covering the Aztecs, including NFL great Marshall Faulk. When the San Diego office closed, he was transferred to the Orange County edition, where he had a chance to sporadically cover the California (now Los Angeles) Angels.
But he wanted more.
In January of 1994, the St. Paul Pioneer Press offered him a position as the beat writer for the Minnesota Twins.
“It sounds crazy leaving the Los Angeles Times to go to St. Paul, Minnesota, especially when my wife was a southern California native, but I was maniac,” Miller said. “Eyes on the prize. I wanted to be a baseball writer now.”
He spent more than five years covering the Twins and got to realize his lifelong dream. When CBS Sports launched a sports website, Miller was offered a job as a national baseball writer, spending the next 14 years traveling the country and writing about some of the top teams, names, and topics in the game. He continued in a similar role with the Bleacher Report for seven years, then was a regular contributor to the New York Times’ baseball coverage, covering both the 2021 and 2022 World Series for the newspaper.
Miller has also done some television work for the San Diego Padres and worked as an analyst on the MLB Network Radio from 2013-2021. He has met some of the game’s greats and said he has learned to keep his professional and personal relationships separate.
“The game helps you to not be such a fan and look at it from a more objective perspective,” he said. “I grew up in Michigan, obviously a Tigers fan. But years into my work, I end up rooting more for the stories and for the people than I do for teams. People with whom you develop relationships.”
People like future Hall of Fame managers Bruce Bochy and Dusty Baker, with whom Miller remains in close contact. And there are many players he has covered over the years. Two of his favorites are from his Minnesota days in former Twins stars Torii Hunter and LaTroy Hawkins. Former all-star pitcher Bob Tewksbury helped Miller co-author his first book, Ninety Percent Mental, which was published in 2018.
He calls his interactions with those in the game “pollination.”
“So the pollination is these guys you get to know, spread across the game, and then that kind of prevents you from having a rooting interest,” he said. “You are rooting for good things to happen to good people.”
Miller just finished his second book, Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter and Always Will, which is set to release in May 2025. The book takes a look at managing since the 1970s and how it has changed but is still relevant today.
“They might not have the authority of an Earl Weaver, Sparky Anderson, or Billy Martin, but it’s still a hugely important job,” Miller said of today’s managers. “It’s just different, and they’ve got to have certain skills to succeed. I talked to probably 200 people for this.”
He said one of his chapters was on current Los Angeles Dodgers Manager and World Series champion Dave Roberts, who is a San Diego native and someone Miller has known for decades.
“I covered him as a quarterback winning the San Diego section championship in football,” Miller said of Roberts. “And from then to now, I kept running into him over the years and got to know him pretty well.”
He is also currently working on a few stories for Newsweek Japan, including a cover story on baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani.
“I’ll pop over to Arizona spring training and spend some time with the Dodgers,” he said of that assignment.
Miller said he and his wife, Kim, a former sportswriter herself, enjoy living in San Diego. They have a grown daughter, Gretchen, who lives in the Sacramento area. When he’s not covering baseball, he said they like to go to Bruce Springsteen concerts and follow Notre Dame football.
So what is his favorite moment covering baseball?
“It was the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship Series, those two years in a row the Yankees played Boston,” he said. “Especially in ’04, when Boston came back from 0 and 3 to run the table and win their first World Series. I was working all those games. It’s almost in my mind’s eye now. Oh my gosh, the stars, the egos, the Yankees, the Red Sox, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park. I never covered a heavyweight title fight, but it’s what I would imagine it would be. The roar and just pure lust in the stadiums for victory. Those were epic games to cover. When the Red Sox finally made that sensational comeback—I knew I was covering something historic. It’s going to be remembered forever.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in February 2025
