Damian Miller has lived a lot of places during his 16-year odyssey in professional baseball.

But from minor-league stops in Elizabethton, Tenn., Kenosha, Wis., Fort Myers, Fla., Nashville and Salt Lake City to Major League stints in Minnesota, Arizona, Chicago and Milwaukee, Miller has never found a place to call home.

He reserves that designation for someplace very special.

“Home is right here,” Miller, 36, said Saturday before he spoke at a fundraiser for a new Boys and Girls Club in West Salem, Wis., at his alma mater, West Salem High School.

“This is home and it always will be.”

With the money he has made in professional baseball, Miller and his family, wife Jeanne, and children Jesse, 5, and Josey, 7, could live just about anywhere in the country. But they chose to remain true to their roots.

That’s why every fall after beating his body up for six months on the baseball diamond, Miller spends his offseason in the Coulee Region, instead of on some tropical island.

“My wife and I are both small-town people,” said Miller, who will begin his second season as the Milwaukee Brewers’ starting catcher this spring. “Our families are from here, and it’s a great place to raise a family. What more could you want?

“Yeah, the weather sometimes isn’t the greatest — some of my teammates think I am nuts spending the winter here instead of in Phoenix — but the people here are good, hard-working people, and I learned a lot from them.”

The lessons Miller learned from those hard-working people no doubt helped him through the eight seasons he toiled in the minor leagues. They also have helped him appreciate everything he has gained through his hard work.

“Nothing ever came easy to me,” Miller said. “I had to bust my hump for everything. And I don’t know if I would have accomplished it without the people here.”

“Over the years, I have really come to appreciate the support of the people here and what this community has meant to me. I think that is the one thing in my life that I’m most grateful for.”

Spending the offseason in the Coulee Region also provides Miller with a much-appreciated refuge from the life of a Major League Baseball player. He can enjoy the outdoors, go out in public and just be an ordinary guy.

But most of all, it allows him to spend some quality time with his family.

“We really like coming here to get away from baseball,” said Miller, who played collegiate baseball at Viterbo University was drafted in the 20th round in 1990 by the Minnesota Twins. “If you live (in the offseason) in someplace like Phoenix, you are surrounded by other players and still see the guys all the time. It’s really hard to get away.

“It also gives me the opportunity to be with my wife and kids and devote my time just to my family. You know, with the season you are gone six months. Then you add in spring training and you really only see your family about three months all year, so I want to be able to spend as much time with them as possible.”

As far as his playing career goes, Miller said he intends to at least play through the two years he has remaining on his contract with the Brewers. And with any luck, those two years will be spent in Milwaukee. But Miller knows that isn’t a given.

“I would like to stay in Milwaukee, but I know it’s a business, so anything can happen.

“I feel good right now. Last year, after the season, I felt like I could have caught another 30 games. So, we’ll see how it plays out.”

But while Miller says he doesn’t know just when he will quit playing baseball, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about what he will do after he retires.

“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about it,”Miller said. “You can’t play as long as I have and not think about what you will do after you are done playing.

“But right now, I really don’t know. I think first I will just take some time off and get away from baseball and probably play a lot of golf. After that, maybe I will get back into baseball, but not professionally. There’s too much travel in that and I have been away from my family enough already.

“Maybe I will get involved locally. Maybe with the Loggers or coaching at a college. Just so long as it would keep me home.”