It's an ice gig for former South Sider Alex Smith

LAS VEGAS — John Phillips Sr. barnstormed around the country, playing first base and pitching for the Hernando Black Giants, loosely affiliated with the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues.

He befriended Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, and even played 20 games for the Grays. In 1955, his athletic days over, Phillips and wife Verna left Hernando, Mississippi, for Chicago.

John drove for Yellow Cab during the week. Many weekends, in a three-piece suit, fedora and shiny dress shoes, he’d hop a train for pool halls and gambling dens in neighboring states.

Sometimes, those dice were tossed in the train cars.

“He’d go to Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,” grandson Alex Smith says. “My mother [Rosemary] said he’d return sometimes with nothing, sometimes with two pillowcases full of cash.

“A couple of dice games on trains were robbed, but he wasn’t ever in real danger. He only got robbed once driving the taxi.”

There’s the gambling bloodline.

The other rudder of Alex’s life appeared at 6, when televised hockey bedazzled him, nearly pulling him onto the ice through the 20-inch Magnavox in his bedroom of the family’s South Side home.

The sweaters, the pads, the sticks, the sharp-edged skates, the speed of the puck and the ice.

Ice!

“It was just different,” Alex says. “And the physicality of it, the fighting and the bloodshed. All of that combined in one sport? Wow. I was captivated.”

It continues captivating the 36-year-old savvy NHL handicapper. For more than 10 years, he has partnered with Canadian Ian Cameron to produce The Ice Guys, a popular daily puck podcast.

“Ian and I were both searching for something,” Alex says. “And rather than trying to find it, we created it.”

Between the pipes

During the NHL’s lockout-shortened 1994-95 season, games of the minor-league Chicago Wolves grabbed Alex’s attention and dominated airtime on his TV screen.

Elbert B. Smith took his son to a Wolves game at the Rosemont Horizon, on Dec. 5, 1997, to clinch Alex’s lifelong hockey affinity.

“They had big flaming towers, and it looked like a rock show,” Alex says. “That in itself was captivating. Then came the game, a slower version; I could detect nuances I wouldn’t have been able to see in the NHL.

“To see how line changes work, how teams are affected in the second period by switching ice ends . . . watching minor-league hockey really helped with what I’m doing as a handicapper.”

He followed all sports, inducing John Phillips Jr., his mother Rosemary’s brother, to tap Alex for aid in a football pick ’em contest at work.

At St. Rita High, Alex says he moved from betting a fin on a couple of weekend basketball or football games to booking those tilts as an upperclassman.

For the Mustangs, he bowled (high 250s is his best) and played on their roller-hockey club squad.

At 19, he weighed 300-plus pounds and stood nearly 6-0 when he answered a Craigs-
list ad from the captain of a North Side roller-hockey club, the Black Wings, seeking a goalie.

It was a 30-and-over coed league, but Alex also wore a beard and glasses; nobody ever questioned his age. Only the captain knew, and he’d grin when teammates invited Alex to a postgame pub.

Thanks, he’d say, but “I’ve got to head back down south, home.”

All eight teams made the playoffs, and the Black Wings won once during the season and their first postseason game.

“A trial by fire,” Alex says. “Some guys played college hockey, others professional lacrosse, guys who knew what they were doing with a stick. I’d give up nine goals on 50 shots, but it was fun.”

Puck allure

A few years after attending that first Wolves game, Alex noticed a “Proline” handicapping TV show, featuring Vegas legend Dave Cokin and others.

“They all dressed nicely, sat around and talked college football,” Alex says, “different than any other show. They’d talk about lines, but were cryptic about it. And the information made sense.

“I’d watch games, and stuff they pointed out occurred. Never, in a million years, could I have imagined that I’d be doing all of that now.”

Alex moved from his family’s Chatham Park Place home to St. Paul, Minnesota, to perfect his bass-guitar touch at the McNally Smith College of Music. He helped form the hard-rock band I, Corvinus, and he explored the business side of music.

(Check out the band’s “The Other — Triple Rock” video from 2012, on YouTube, to see Alex conquering his axe.)

Later that year, however, after gallbladder surgery, he left that industry. Hockey, his lifelong passion, beckoned.

Cokin and Matt Youmans co-hosted a Las Vegas Sporstline show, on Vegas ESPN radio, to which Alex listened regularly.

He’s an ardent Led Zeppelin fan, and songs by that group were featured in outros and intros of that show every Monday. Once, Alex couldn’t name a song. He wrote Youmans, who answered, “No Quarter.”

Youmans found Alex’s website, saw that he was on a 9-1 NHL run and invited him onto the show. Alex soared. More invitations followed.

In 2017, Youmans went to the Vegas Stats & Information Network (VSiN). To talk puck, he often features Alex.

Must-hear insights

In last year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, Alex scored big with a second-round exacta series wager, with a 31-to-1 return, when Dallas defeated Winnipeg in six games.

He calls this season’s Western Conference “completely open.” And as well as Buffalo has been playing, he “can’t commit to a futures ticket on them, yet.”

He is “sweating out” a +220 ticket on the Kings to miss the playoffs, but he favors wagers on the Ducks to finish with more than 81.5 points and +310 to make the playoffs.

Chicago native Sam Panayotovich, who analyzes sports betting for the Fox Sports website and is half of the well-known Chicken Dinner podcast, has tapped Alex for his hockey acumen for years.

For two people who have never met, they are tight, even more stunning since Panayotovich attended rival Mount Carmel.

It’s one deal to know the game, Panayotovich says, another to know how to bet it. Alex uncovers trends before they’re common knowledge, Panayotovich adds, and unearths sound wagers in goal-scorer markets.

“His preseason thoughts are must-hear,” Sammy says. “This past summer, he said the Anaheim Ducks were a great bet to make the playoffs at plus money. They’re currently in first place in the Pacific.

“I don’t place hockey bets unless I get the green light from Alex. And he’s a dear friend, even if he went to St. Rita.”

A fairy tale

Elbert Smith practiced internal medicine at both South Shore Hospital and Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. On weekends, he worked in emergency rooms.

He first crossed paths with Rosemary, a nurse, in a South Shore hall. A fairy tale, Alex says. They were together five days shy of 40 years when, at 85, Elbert B. Smith died in 2021.

“My dad, he had to be pushed into taking days off,” Alex says. “A workaholic. That’s instilled with me, from both of my parents. Work hard, play hard.

“That’s why our podcasts are seven days a week. We don’t take a day off, and we don’t like taking days off.”