Born in Lancaster and raised in Elizabethtown, Bruce graduated from Elizabethtown High School, where he was one of only three class members to play four years of high school baseball. He was a member of Lancaster-Lebanon League championship teams in 1978 and 1979.
He was assistant baseball coach at Elizabethtown, 1982 and 1986-87, and Warwick High School, 1983-84, and head baseball coach at Warwick, 1988-90. He was assistant baseball coach at Franklin & Marshall College, 1990-92. He has been involved in American Legion Baseball since 1981. He coached teams in Elizabethtown and Lititz in the 1980s. He served on the Region 4 Tournament Committee, 1986-2014, and was Lancaster County Legion League President, 1991-2016. He has been a sectional director for Lancaster and Lebanon counties since 1996, Region 4 director since 2016 and on the State Tournament Committee since 1999.
He was inducted into the Pennsylvania American Legion Sports Hall of Fame in 2008. He was a letter carrier for U.S. Postal Service, 1984-2018, and mail clerk at Lancaster General Hospital since 2018.
He joined the board of Lancaster County Sports Hall of Fame in April 2022.