Phil Smith is a fanatical baseball fan whose office is wall-to-wall with old baseball memorabilia worth practically nothing. During his life he has worked as a sacker in a grocery store, night clerk at a funeral home, lumber man, janitor, security guard, computer operator, assembly line worker, letter carrier, soldier in the US army, and high school softball and basketball coach. He is currently employed as a professor of American history at Tulsa Community College. He is still married to the girl he began dating at the age of sixteen, and together they have two children.