Palmyra grad had a long road to Alabama, but the trip is paying off

It was a long road for Palmyra grad Gage Miller to get to Alabama, but the destination is proving to be worth the effort.

At one time a recruit of Clarion, and after playing two years for Bishop State Community College, Miller has started in 40 of 41 games for the nationally ranked Crimson Tide, and the leadoff-hitting third baseman is not just along for the ride.

As of April 23, after the first 40 games of his junior season, Miller is batting .386 with 17 home runs, nine doubles and two triples. He has 58 runs scored and 45 RBIs. His batting average was over .400 as recently as April 19, and he has had a 16-game hitting streak, as well.

The numbers are comparable to what Miller could do in a full season when he was still at BSCC. As a sophomore in 2023, he led BSCC with a .397 average, seven homers, 50 RBIs and 15 doubles. As a freshman, Miller batted .391 with eight homers and 14 doubles.

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But don’t let the numbers fool you – the competition jumped up when Miller transferred to Tuscaloosa.

“When I transferred here, everyone was just better. It was harder to get a spot [on the team],” Miller said. “It’s definitely a lot faster because everyone is just better. You don’t get any time off during a game.”

On the other hand, Miller is also surrounded by more talented teammates now as well, with a chance to aim for bigger goals. The Crimson Tide are currently ranked No. 23 in Division I, having been as high up the rankings as No. 11. They’ve posted victories against two teams when they were ranked No. 1.

On April 13 and 14, Alabama put up back-to-back wins over then top-ranked Arkansas. Miller homered in the first win, a 4-3 10-inning triumph, and contributed a double in the second victory, a 5-0 blanking.

Though the Crimson Tide dropped their first two matchups against current No. 1 Texas A&M, they did salvage a 10-9 victory on April 20. Miller had his most recent home run in that contest.

Alabama is now 26-15 with a 7-11 record in the SEC with 13 games left to play. The regular season will end with baseball’s version of the Iron Bowl, a three-game series at Auburn. While the baseball diamond might have a different atmosphere than the gridiron, Miller said the conference games still carry the same intensity.

“It’s a very competitive league,” Miller said. “All three games that weekend are very intense.”

Preparing for those games is a time commitment in and of itself, both in terms of his usual week and in terms of his year-long calendar.

“In the fall, when we were just practicing, we would practice six days a week for four hours. That’s just the practice, not the time we spend lifting,” Miller said. “We play about four games a week [in the spring], and then we practice two of the other three. We are probably at the field five hours each day, except for our one day off.”

It may be a long way from Palmyra, both in distance and time (870 miles and three years), but Miller has not forgotten his Cougar roots or teammates.

“I text everyone once in a while, some of them I text every day,” Miller said.

In his senior year at Palmyra in 2021, Miller hit .458 with five homers and 26 RBIs. That was the last Cougar team to qualify for the District 3 playoffs.