Phil Ross also is author of ONCE A TROJAN ALWAYS A TROJAN: A True Story and BOTCHED BLOODING: They Tried to Kill Me ... and Then They S tole My Livelihood (A Fictionalized Account of Compelling Actual Events). He was a veteran college and prep baseball umpire throughout most of the 1980s and '90s. Ross is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, and has 30-plus years' award-winning experience as a daily newspaper editor/reporter, and in public relations in California, Nevada, Texas and Colorado. He served five years in Majority Communications for the Colorado House of Representatives. Ross earned a B.A. in Mass Communication from Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay) and is an honorably discharged Vietnam Era Army veteran, having qualified as an Expert on three rifles and the .45-cal. pistol. He also was a freelance writer on the professional rodeo cowboys' circuit. He lives with his wife in Colorado.