Between the Bylines Read online

  I heartily shook King’s hand and said, “Don, this is Gillian…She’s from England.”

  “Oh, she’s royalty! A princess! Wow! So happy to met you, your royal highness!” jested King, in prime hyperbolic form.

  Gillian’s face reddened, and she nodded in obvious embarrassment.

  She had no idea who Don King was, and King would be the first of many sporting personalities she’d meet during our time together, most of whom were unknown to her.

  But a few minutes later, after we arrived at Michael’s, Gillian did actually meet a person whose name she did recognize: the former heavyweight champion George Foreman. He was at the time in the midst of his remarkable comeback and was a couple years away from stunning the fistic orbit by becoming the world champion again with a tenth-round knockout of Michael Moorer.

  Roberto Duran, here with Doug, was one of the most enduring fighters of all time across five decades and four weight divisions.

  George joined us at Michael’s that evening because of his long friendship with the zany fight publicist Bill (Bozo) Caplan, a close friend of Malamud who had been working with Foreman since Foreman was an amateur winning a gold medal in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

  Ironically, it was at Michael’s almost six years earlier that I sat next to Foreman, who announced that evening to his dining companions that he was planning to return to the sweet science even though he had been retired from it for almost a decade.

  Don King gets expansive with KMPC sports talk radio hosts Joe McDonnell (left) and Doug.

  I remember telling George such an idea was absurd—he insisted he wasn’t broke even though others felt there was a financial motivation behind his decision—and I repeated my feelings early the next morning when we jogged together around Las Vegas for more than an hour and a half.

  Fortunately for Foreman, he ignored my advice, and his comeback would turn out to be a stirring success that would climax with his impalement of Moorer when he was forty-four. It’s estimated that his fistic sequel resulted in his earning more than $250 million, and that doesn’t even include the $100 million he made outside the ring from selling his share of the George Foreman Grill.

  There were ten people in our group that Friday night at Michael’s, and what I remember most about that dinner was Gillian taking issue with the way I addressed her during the ordering of drinks.

  “Honey, what would you like to have?” I asked. Saying honey and sweetheart and sweetie pie had long been part of my outmoded vernacular.

  “My name is Gillian,” she responded, loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.

  There was a momentarily tense silence, and then Bozo Caplan, ever the jokester, piped up, “C’mon, Doug, how could you not know Gillian’s name?”

  Laughter broke out, and I said, “Sorry, Gillian, what would you like to drink?”

  Privately, I was bothered by Gillian’s rather brusque reaction that seemed so out of character for someone I had found to be so soft and sweet, but I let it pass—for the moment.

  We had, as always at Michael’s, a superlative dinner, and the service was exemplary. Afterward, we watched Allan Malamud play blackjack at the Barbary, and he did well, as he was up over $20,000 when we walked back to Caesars.

  Gillian and I went on an hour-long run the next morning, and after we got back, as she showered, I went to the gift shop and bought her a Caesars sweatshirt and T-shirt so she’d have mementoes of her Las Vegas trip.

  But when I presented them to her, she shook her head in dissent and said, “I can’t accept these unless I pay you for them. I just won’t accept them.”

  Now I had come to realize that Gillian Howgego was a strongly independent lady with feminist leanings. But I had had enough of it and decided to voice my disapproval, which I hadn’t done the previous evening at dinner after her chiding of me for my addressing her with an eponymous word.

  “First off, Gillian, I’m not trying to buy you with these gifts,” I said firmly. “I got these because I like you and because I want you to have something to take back to London as a remembrance of your stay in Las Vegas. You know, last night you seemed terribly offended when I referred to you as ‘honey.’ Well, it was certainly not my intent to disparage you by using the word. I’ve long used the word in normal conversation, and if it offends you, I’ll try not to use it anymore. But its intent was not to degrade you, as you obviously thought it was. It’s just part of the way I speak. I’m sorry that you were so offended.”

  Gillian bowed her head, and I noticed rivulets of tears suddenly streaming down her cheeks. She rubbed her eyes, glanced up at me sheepishly and said in a low voice, “I’m also sorry. I spoke out of turn, and I’ll never do it again. I know you didn’t mean anything bad by what you said. Sometimes I guess I get a little carried away, and I’m sure my being up for so long and being very tired didn’t help matters. And thank you for the shirts. It’s very thoughtful of you.”

  Never again would Gillian take umbrage with my antiquated terms of endearment, even though they didn’t fit within the feminist parameters of her zeitgeist.

  Chapter 5

  We spent the following afternoon lounging at the Caesars pool, reading, swimming, frolicking and laughing, much of the latter caused by Bill Caplan, whom I long ago had nicknamed “Bozo” for his wacky disposition.

  To say I had built up a bizarre collection of pals and acquaintances over the decades would be an understatement of staggering magnitude. Not many were establishment figures, and most were bookmakers, ticket touts, dreamers, gamblers, boozers, skirt chasers, bartenders and guys like Caplan who eat too much and traverse the obstacle course of life with their guiles, smiles, laughter and charm.

  Ol’ Bozo worked for a lot of famed fight promoters—Don King, Bob Arum, Dan Goossen, Aileen Eaton, George Parnassus—and has been endowed with a God-given skill of being able to schmooze with members of the media and get many to write favorably about his clients’ shows even when those shows have been preordained farces.

  He was terrific at PR—actually, still is now for Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions—but no one ever made me laugh more than Caplan did on those rare occasions he handled public address chores at boxing matches. Certainly, he wasn’t as smooth as the most renowned practitioner of the art, Michael “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” Buffer, but Caplan left the aficionados rolling in the aisles in guffaws with his loud, piercing, melodramatic voice and his humorous introductions like the one he made one memorable night at a small fight show in Anaheim in the pre–politically correct days when he introduced a long-forgotten preliminary fighter thusly: “And in this corner, he’s big, he’s bad and he’s black.” No one giggled more animatedly than the fighter himself, but Caplan, sadly, didn’t seriously pursue such an endeavor, even though I think he would have been as successful as Buffer had he done so.

  The fight crowd was out en masse at the Caesars pool that scorching late September afternoon, and Caplan cut a most comical figure in his ill-fitting bathing suit with the 315 pounds that amply filled his five-foot-seven frame, giving him an unmistakably noticeable presence.

  He never stopped prattling and joking, and Gillian turned to me on one occasion and said, “Are all your friends this wildly amusing?”

  “Well, there is only one Bozo, but almost all of them have their own unique personas,” I said.

  “What do you think of America so far?” I wondered.

  “Definitely different,” she said. “It seems the people are so much friendlier here. And that was the best meal I’ve ever had last night. I never had a steak [New York sirloin] like that. Never. And that dessert was incredible. What do you call it again?”

  “Bananas Foster,” I said.

  “Never had anything close to that.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “And I’ve noticed the helpings here are huge, much larger than in England.”

  When Gillian departed for the restroom, I asked Caplan, “What do you think of her?”


  “Sweet girl,” he replied. “As long as you don’t call her honey.”

  We laughed.

  “No big thing,” I said. “She was tired last night. She’d been up for more than twenty-four hours. I told her that’s just the way I talk. I think she now understands.”

  Caplan nodded.

  “I’ve always liked British people, and I’m sure I’ll like Gillian,” he said. “We’ll have fun at the fight tonight. You’re not even working it, right?”

  “You’re right.”

  Alas, the Norris-Brown fight would be canceled later that day when Brown had to be hospitalized for dizziness, and Gillian and I had an uneventful Chinese dinner at Caesars that evening and then walked around the Strip, where we gazed at the neon sights and had lengthy discussions on various subjects.

  I remember her telling me about how she became skilled in judo.

  “I got interested in it when I was going to the University of Newcastle and wasn’t very good at it at the beginning,” she related. “I wasn’t really into it—I was doing it just to keep in shape—but somehow wound up participating in a competition. I faced a woman who was well experienced, and she beat me badly. I thought she was unnecessarily rough with me. Actually, I think she tried to humiliate me. I was not only embarrassed but mad.

  “Well, for a whole year, I took judo seriously. Very seriously. Trained about three hours every day. And when I met that woman again in a competition, I was ready for her. And I beat her pretty easily. She was absolutely stunned.”

  That was my first hint of Gillian’s fierce competitive nature. She would go on to display it often when jogging, lifting weights, studying and battling her illness. She betrayed such a side when discussing her early days in London when she was working in the pediatric ward at St. Bartholomew’s and residing in a cramped one-room apartment on the premises.

  “I didn’t know anyone in the city, and there were times when I didn’t have enough money for food,” she said. “I went to bed hungry many times.”

  “Why didn’t you ask your parents for help?” I wondered.

  “Oh, I’d never do that,” she said. “I was twenty-one. I was an adult. I was determined to take care of myself. It was a struggle. But I somehow made my way through it.”

  I liked what I was hearing from this woman whom I knew only on a superficial level. Clearly, she had a strong inner drive and didn’t let adverse circumstances unravel her. Who would have guessed that in less than eight years she would be tested beyond human comprehension in this area?

  We flew back to LAX the next day, dined that evening at Phil Trani’s and went back to my home in east Long Beach, where Gillian took a swim in the backyard pool before going to bed.

  That week, I returned to my busy schedule, and I had Gillian wait for me during the afternoons at the Studio City apartment of my close friend Johnny Ortiz while I did the radio show in Hollywood.

  Ortiz was a Cuban gentleman storied for his nimbleness at courting women, as well as being known for his lengthy involvement in boxing as a manager, a co-owner of the legendary Main Street Gym in downtown Los Angeles and a longtime host of a popular radio fight show.

  At the time, he was residing with his five-year-old daughter, Johnna, who wound up adoring Gillian. Gillian taught her how to swim in the apartment pool and also took Johnna one afternoon to Universal Studios.

  I took Gillian with me to the CBS Studio on Sunset on Thursday night, and she watched the taping of the L.A. Football Company show and even met a couple Raiders players who were guests on it.

  Raiders managing general partner Al Davis holds court with the media. Doug (right center) listens intently.

  We got along well, and the twenty-three-year age difference never became an issue, never was even mentioned. I did find it strange that she never inquired about my age, but I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer it since I figured such a revelation might frighten her away.

  She flew back to London on Saturday morning amid tender embraces and sweet words. I told her I’d be returning to England in late December, which I did.

  But I didn’t see her and wouldn’t for more than three years.

  April 1998 (A Dark Omen)

  We were so happy, so blessed, as a fervent desire of both of us soon was to become a reality. I never was filled with greater joy than during the almost five months of Gillian’s pregnancy. Finally, at fifty-four, I was going to become a father, much to the relief of my parents, who had yearned for such a wondrous development for many years.

  I never had desired to have a family before I married Gillian. I never wanted such a burdensome responsibility, although twice previously I had seemed destined for fatherhood, only for early miscarriages to prevent it.

  After Gillian and I exchanged matrimonial vows on September 27, 1997, at the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach before a small gathering, we delayed our honeymoon until December, when we took a twenty-six-day trip to Europe.

  We started it off in Rome, then went to Cannes and Paris before flying to Newcastle for Christmas at Gillian’s parents home in a village near Hartlepool and then continued the journey to Munich, Vienna and Berlin before returning to Long Beach.

  I remember one morning in Munich when we were in our Park Hilton hotel room and, as the maid was cleaning it, Gillian was complaining of being nauseous. The maid, who was from the Philippines and spoke English, overheard Gillian. “I think you might be pregnant,” the woman interjected.

  Both of us ignored what she said—I don’t even think we commented on it—but it came to mind a week later on a Friday morning after we had returned to Long Beach when Gillian admitted she was still having occasional periods of nausea, as well as not having her normal menstrual cycle.

  I immediately phoned Dr. Narciso Azurin, whose office was in nearby South Gate, and he told me to bring Gillian in for a pregnancy test. Dr. Azurin wasn’t my regular physician, but I had come to know him well because his parents lived next door to me.

  There are times in one’s life when something momentously blissful occurs that is forever etched in one’s consciousness—and forever remains a glad remembrance.

  For me, that came later on that day of January 9, 1998, when Dr. Azurin called to notify us that Gillian’s test was positive and that she was indeed pregnant.

  I immediately called my parents, called Gillian’s parents, called all my friends and was beside myself with joy, as was Gillian.

  How beautifully symmetrical was the life now unfolding for us. We couldn’t have asked for a more heavenly blessing.

  I recall that evening celebrating the great event at several taverns around Long Beach, buying a lot of drinks and consuming a lot of them—much to my regret the next day when I endured a horrific hangover.

  The next couple of months went seamlessly, as regular visits to Gillian’s obstetrician resulted in only positive reports, including a ultrasound that showed the fetus in her womb to be male.

  I enjoyed those visits, especially when the nurse would rub the ultrasound against Gillian’s stomach and I could see a squirming outline of something I had helped create. How proud and exhilarated I felt. I had changed so much since falling in love with Gillian. I had always been so self-absorbed in my job and in my carefree lifestyle and never cared one bit about propagating the human species.

  But now I just couldn’t wait for my son to be born, couldn’t wait to take him to ballgames, to teach him how to hit a baseball, shoot a basketball, kick a soccer ball. I was in a constant state of euphoria, as was Gillian. She had given up so much to join me in America—a job she cherished, a group of loyal friends she cherished, a close-knit family she cherished. It was a daring move on her part, and it was all working out fabulously.

  Gillian had been so healthy during her pregnancy that we never missed a workout, either at Frog’s, a fitness center on the campus of Long Beach State, or 24-Hour Fitness, which was nearer to our home.

  “Douglas,” she used to say with such earnestness, “I think
this country is my good luck charm. Ever since I came, everything has been perfect for me. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

  On April 1, as I drove to the Aquarium of the Pacific in downtown Long Beach for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach media gathering—the annual open-wheel race was to be held four days later—I kept thinking to myself how I had been bestowed with so much good fortune in my life.

  Gillian is captured in a happy moment early in the marriage.

  I had overcome a California zip code pedigree of rural bleakness to wind up working for a major daily in the movie capital of the world and covering, even becoming friends with, many sporting personages; becoming a radio personality; and even making TV and film appearances.

  While my private life often had been turbulent—the bad first marriage, the constant pursuit of women after it, the anguish of romantic breakups, the drugs, the drinking, the frenetic years of excessive gambling—I finally had settled into a stable existence with a bright lady with a good heart and with a son looming on the incandescent horizon.

  The Aquarium of the Pacific wouldn’t be open to the public for another two and a half months, and the huge tanks that soon would be filled with 350,000 gallons of water and thousands of marine life were empty.

  But the place that day was brimming with civic leaders, race officials, media members and Indy race car drivers like Alex Zanardi, Dario Franchitti, Al Unser Jr., Bobby Rahal and many others.

  As I was speaking to Zanardi, who would go on a few days later to win the race, my cellphone rang.

  “Oh, it’s my wife…Pardon me for the interruption,” I said to Zanardi, who nodded amiably.

  The words I heard at the other end left me shaken.

  “Honey, I’m bleeding badly…Please come home,” Gillian was saying somberly. “I called the doctor, and he wants me to come to the hospital as soon as possible.”