But those doubts quickly would drift away, as I realized I had simply fallen in love with Gillian for her many commendable qualities, including her strong family ties, tender heart and sweet disposition. The fact that I was attracted physically to her also was vital, since all her other commendable qualities would have been quite irrelevant if I weren’t. And I’m sure my advancing age also might have had an influence on my feelings, as I found it increasingly difficult to look at myself in a mirror since I no longer recognized the impersonator staring back at me.
Actually, a person who peripherally might have had an impact on me was the actor Warren Beatty, a legendary Lothario who for decades was linked with hundreds of stunning women.
But then, a couple weeks before his fifty-fifth birthday in March 1992, the devoted bachelor shockingly decided to end his freelance existence, marrying the actress Annette Bening, thirty-four, with whom he would go on to have four children.
What might have spurred Beatty to make such an unexpected decision was a humiliating public incident the previous year when a twenty-two-year-old model he was dating, Stephanie Seymour, coldly dumped him for Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses.
“Beatty finally got his romantic comeuppance and quickly decided to settle down with a younger woman who actually liked him before it was too late,” said my pal Joe Dee Fox, a veteran participant of romantic interplay himself who later counteracted his advancing age—he’s now in his mid-seventies—by moving permanently to Rosarito Beach in Mexico, where he now dates women one-fourth his age for a modest fee.
I knew the time was now right for me to settle down before it was too late, and it just seemed to me that Gillian and I were so perfectly aligned on so many different levels, despite being different in so many ways—a contradiction that in a weird way worked in our favor.
That summer, I covered the Olympic Games in Atlanta, and it was a debilitating two-and-a-half-week assignment in which I wrote two columns a day, plus a news story. I stayed in a small, cut-rate motel ten miles from downtown Atlanta and had to endure a two-mile round-trip daily walk to the MARTA station, where I took the rapid transit railway to the media transportation outlet in the city center.
And then I’d catch buses that would take me to the different venues—sometimes as many as three, even four in a day. I usually didn’t get back to my motel room until eleven o’clock in the evening and often would phone Gillian to relate the day’s events, which included some remarkable achievements like Michael Johnson’s world record–setting runs in the two hundred and four hundred meters and Kerri Strug’s dramatic leap on a sprained ankle that ensured the U.S. gymnastic team its first gold medal. And there was that terroristic non-sports development—the Centennial Park bombing—that kept me up an entire evening covering it.
Gillian always boosted my spirits during our phone discussions. I found myself missing her terribly. Up to that time, nothing in my newspaper career had been as challenging for me as covering those Atlanta Olympics. I would go through it again four years later in Sydney. There’s no letdown in the work, and stern discipline must be maintained each day because of the constant writing, constant interviewing, constant bus traveling and constant tight deadlines in an unfamiliar environment among a swarm of people. And also, for good measure, there is never enough sleep.
I enjoyed being a sportswriter for so many reasons—the games, the travel, the relationships, the myriad PR gatherings, the thrill of seeing my name in print, etc.—but there always was a downside to it. There was no glamour in the tense periods of deadline writing, nor was there any glamour when you had to produce articles of interest day after cloying day, as was the case when laboring at the Olympics, as well as the Super Bowl and World Series and other high-profile events.
My newspaper gave me a couple weeks off in comp time when the Olympics ended, and Gillian flew out to LA to be with me. I had a surprise for her.
Hawaii.
Chapter 22
While Maui long has been the destination of choice for couples in the early stages of romance, I decided on the more crowded Oahu since I’ve always enjoyed the rowdy liveliness of Waikiki and since I always have been crazily entertained by one of its cherished personalities, Gary “Mad Dog” Derks, a Long Beach transplant with a prodigious thirst for booze who, fittingly, opened a popular bar in the area called Mad Dog’s Saloon, which still is in existence.
As I’ve stated, one of my many private failings always has been a fascination for those individuals who live outside the categories, and, oh, have I known many over the years on the Southern California terrain with colorful nicknames like Craig “Five Bellies” Vestermark, a zany Long Beach fireman whose foghorn-blaring voice was exceeded in magnitude only by his outlandishly large girth; five-foot-three, 260-pound octogenarian bar owner Dickie “2Fast, 2Furious” Babian, who is as wide as he is tall and who out-drinks all his customers; and the Holy Grail of such types, Donnie “No Win” Kramer, who has an unrivaled propensity for losing bets, syntax-fracturing malapropos and hilarious non sequiturs.
Donnie No Win began as a ticket hustler as a ten-year-old water boy for the USC football team. Some of the players would give him their tickets, and Kramer would go out in front of the Memorial Coliseum and make a few bucks selling them to fans. When I first went to work at the Herald Examiner, I always heard Kramer’s name being mentioned when someone was talking about the best ticket scalper in LA, and I often came across him in front of the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, sports arenas, the Olympic Auditorium and The Forum.
The legendary Los Angeles ticket scalper Donnie “No Win” Kramer is pictured with his wife, Debbie.
He is perhaps the goofiest guy I’ve ever known, but he had an innate knack for peddling tickets on the street before the business was transformed by Stub Hub. I first wrote about him in the Herald Examiner before the 1978 Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos when, on game day morning, I spotted him in the coffee shop of the Regency Hyatt in New Orleans with a brown paper bag filled with $20,000. He was buying $30 Super Bowl tickets from fans in the buffet line for the then unheard-of price of $300 for travel agents who had come up short in their Super Bowl packages. People couldn’t believe it. Kramer was a sick gambler who once bet a guy he could jog from downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach—and he did it in seven hours. That’s about a twenty-eight-mile jog, and he did it in the middle of a warm summer day wearing flip flops and carrying 250 unflattering pounds on his beefy frame! That might well be the only bet he’s ever won. The guy’s absolutely bonkers!
Another ticket guy just as colorful as Kramer was Alex Henig, a big, boisterous fellow, who, like Donnie No Win, stepped right out of a Damon Runyon novel and worked his trade in his early years not out of an office but out of the trunk of his car and a telephone booth. Everyone on the LA sporting scene knew Alex Henig, with his booming voice and hulking frame, and he became a close friend of O.J. Simpson, who sold Alex his Rose Bowl and Super Bowl tickets and who served as a pallbearer at Alex’s funeral. Alex went everywhere, and one of his closest pals was Heckle Lynn, an assistant equipment manager with the Los Angeles Rams who owned a popular restaurant in Pasadena called Heckle’s. I was in Henig’s West Hollywood office one day when the actress Cloris Leachman called him for tickets, and Alex said in his booming voice, “Cloris, I gotta be in your next picture!” He handled tickets for a lot of celebrities in LA.
Another ticket guy who was a fixture at all the big fights—I always saw him in Las Vegas, where he had RF&B (room, food and beverage) privileges at Caesars Palace—was a tall, thin African American gentleman named Flip Speight, who always wore a black derby and who lived at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. What a character he was! He was part of the Muhammad Ali entourage, and I was told he moved tickets for Don King. He always picked up my bill at the Caesars coffee shop and was a fixture at all the big sports event, including annually appearing in the winner’s circle at the Kentucky Derby.
Another guy in the Muhammad Ali entourage who
actually is a close friend of mine is Gene Kilroy. He’s been a casino host for years in Las Vegas but was a financial adviser to Ali and introduced Ali to the Kennedys. Gene knows everybody, and everybody knows Gene, including every boxing writer. Gene’s a lifetime bachelor, and he thinks any female past nineteen is past her prime. He’s always had an eye for very young ladies and has dated literally hundreds of them. And one of his standard lines to these women when he gets mad at them is, “If you don’t shape up, I’m going to put you on ‘The Dog,’” which meant he’d put them on the Greyhound bus.
And then there’s a guy I grew up with in Fowler, Donnie Srabian, toughest guy I’ve ever known. Fearless. Came from a rich grape-growing family and was a terrific high school and college football player. He took up boxing in Fresno and became a sparring partner of Max Foster, who fought Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title. The fight promoter Don Chargin offered him $50,000 to turn pro, but he wasn’t interested.
I can go on and on and on with stories about Donnie knocking out guys in street fights around Fresno and other places. I doubt any of his fights lasted longer than ten seconds. He also was ungodly strong. I won fifty dollars one night on him in an arm wrestling contest at a nightclub in Downey called the Staircase, operated at the time by the gambling figure Fast Eddie Cosek. The guy he beat didn’t want to pay me, and I pursued him into the restroom. As we’re walking behind the guy, Donnie says to me loud enough for the guy to hear, “Let him take a punch at you, and I’ll knock him out.” The guy, who was big and very intimidating-looking with a shaved head and a lot of tattoos, must have heard what Donnie said because he immediately reached into his wallet and handed me the fifty dollars. In his own macho way, Donnie Srabian was an unforgettable character, albeit not one to rile up.
Doug talks with heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.
Heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes (right) makes a point with Doug and Donnie Srabian (left), who was known as a tough street fighter back in the day.
Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo stops a bike ride for this shot with Donnie Srabian (left) and Doug.
By far, the biggest sports gambler I’ve ever known was Norm Gray, whom I called “The Plunger” in the Herald Examiner. He owned one of the most successful Ford, Lincoln, Mercury dealerships in America out in the Santa Clarita Valley, and what a gambler he was! He’d bet up to $250,000 on a single football game, and I was with him one afternoon at the Mirage sports book when he was betting $50,000 a horse race—and there were ten of them that day. And then that night I saw him win one hundred grand at the craps table. I flew back with him and his brother, Bobby, the next evening to the Burbank Airport on the private jet of Steve Wynn, the owner of the Mirage, and idly asked The Plunger how he did for the weekend. He said coolly, “Not bad. It was a good weekend. Lost only about $35,000.”
I remember once having dinner before a Lakers game at The Forum Club, and I was in conversation with a guy named R.D. Hubbard, who then ran Hollywood Park. I said to R.D., “I heard Norm Gray won a $1.4 million Pick Six.” And R.D. replied, “Yeah, he needs it. I hope he wins ten or twenty more. Then he might be even.” The Plunger was a real sportsman, and I love the guy, as well as his brother, Bobby, also a prolific gambler at the time. The Plunger invited me several times to have dinner with him in Las Vegas, and once at the Palace Court at Caesars the bill was more than $8,000, and he left a $5,000 tip. That was Norm The Plunger. What a sport. When he got married, he hired the famous singer Smokey Robinson to perform. I heard his wedding cost around $1 million.
And of course, there was Wilt Chamberlain, whose prodigious scoring and rebounding exploits were exceeded only by his prodigious boasting that oft-times was pure fantasy. I remember once taking a cab in the late morning from the Boston airport to the Lakers’ hotel with Wilt. On the way, he spotted a couple pretty coeds walking down the street, had the cabbie stop the car, jumped out and spoke to them for a couple minutes. Later that evening, I ran into Wilt at the Point After, a Boston nightclub, and asked him if he had seen the coeds again. “Oh, I nailed both of them later in the day,” he said. Oh, please! I guess they were part of his twenty thousand sexual conquests!
And then there was the heavyweight boxer Tex Cobb, whom I had come to know well and adored. Howard Cosell covered Cobb’s world title fight against Larry Holmes that was so bloodily one-sided—Holmes won easily—that Cosell vowed never to broadcast another professional fight, which he didn’t.
Tex was a guy who said whatever he felt like, and political correctness wasn’t part of his nature. Once we were at the old PSA Hotel near The Forum having drinks in the lobby bar when a couple of quite large African American gentlemen spotted Cobb, and one said, “Tex Cobb!” And Tex looked at the guy congenially and responded, “What’s going on, black boy?” I winced, but the African American guys just laughed, understanding that Tex was just being Tex and wasn’t being racist.
Mad Dog Derks, of course, lived up to his billing during the four days Gillian and I were in Hawaii, as he took us to his favorite spots, which included his own tavern just once because, as he said, he’d drink all the profits if he frequented the place, which is located at the back of the International Market Place. What I always found most amazing about Mad Dog is not his staggering capacity to imbibe alcohol but that he always managed to keep himself in flawless shape—he is a devoted runner—despite his excesses. Incredibly, the six-foot-one Mad Dog maintains a buff body and has matinee idol looks that belie his frenzied lifestyle, even to this day! And he’s one of earth’s blessed souls—he doesn’t get hangovers!
Dinner in Las Vegas often meant good times, as evinced here. Doug has his arm around Johnny “The Downey Flash” Ortiz in the back row. Famous Los Angeles sports bettor Norm “The Plunger” Gray is seated to the right and his brother, Bobby, is behind him.
We stayed at the oceanfront Hilton Hawaiian Village; sunbathed on the beach; went kayaking; went sightseeing around the island, including an afternoon at Pearl Harbor; and spent a lot of time at Mad Dog’s favorite watering hole, Duke’s, an open-air tavern at the Outrigger Hotel.
Mad Dog held court at Duke’s—he was its unofficial greeter—and gave out periodic dog barking sounds, which increased in piercing volume as his consumption of booze increased. Naturally, Gillian liked Mad Dog, and she would turn out to like all my goofy friends.
There never was a dull moment, and Gillian kept saying to me, “This is just so different than London. It’s like another world to me, another planet. Warm. Tranquil. Relaxing. Everyone friendly, helpful, in bright moods. What a place. Now I know why people talk so fondly about Hawaii. Douglas, can we come back here someday?”
“Of course,” I said, not realizing that circumstances would keep that from ever happening.
From Hawaii, we flew to San Francisco, where we checked into the downtown Hilton Hotel. We spent our first night at a party staged at the Pacific Heights mansion of Doug Knittle, a one-time street ticket scalper from Southern California who, through foresight, guile and the courage of his visionary convictions, rose to the top of his profession and was the first person in America to make serious money from the World Cup Soccer competition.
Knittle started a firm called Razor Gator—he later sold it—and always was ahead of the curve in his industry but lagged behind when the Internet started to make its widespread impact on it. A couple Stanford graduates came to him with a business model about distributing tickets on the Internet and even offered Knittle a piece of the action. Unfortunately, he turned it down, and Stub Hub revolutionized the ticket market—and made those Stanford graduates incredibly wealthy.
Like so many other tourists through the ages, Gillian became instantly enamored with San Francisco. We stayed for only three days but never relaxed and never stopped moving. We rode the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf, visited Alcatraz, had breakfast at Sear’s, lunch at Lefty O’Doul’s, dinner at Capp’s and brunch at Sam’s waterfront café in Tiburon. We also went to Santa Rosa one day to
see my cousin, Kenny Comali, who lived alone on the 250-acre ranch he had inherited from his parents and that later was bought by Simi Winery. I spent a lot of time during my childhood hunting birds on that picturesque ranch with its rolling hills and fifty acres of oak trees—the most on any ranch in Sonoma County—when I often would come to Santa Rosa with my mother and sister to visit my Italian grandparents.
I felt a sense of melancholy because the old ranch that was now desolate—my cousin was an alcoholic who would die a few years later from cirrhosis of the liver—revived fond memories of the long-ago days when it was brimming with cows, turkeys, pigs, dogs, cats and farmhands. We left after a couple hours and drove through Wine Country, with stops in Calistoga and St. Helena. We returned to San Francisco late in the afternoon and that evening had dinner with a friend of mine who owned a small ticket agency in San Francisco and his wife, a tall, attractive lady not shy about expressing her views on various matters.
Gillian pets a horse at Doug’s relatives’ ranch in Santa Rosa. Doug’s cousin, Ken Comali, is in the background.
After we finished and went back to the hotel, Gillian said to me, “Douglas, I don’t like that lady. All she did was talk about herself and talk about money and clothes and jewelry. I simply couldn’t stand being around her. Can we not have dinner with them again?”
I nodded.
I never had heard Gillian talk negatively about anyone, but clearly she had an aversion to those given to materialism and affectations.
It was just another quality that further endeared her to me.
May 2000 (The Metastasis)
The devastating phone call came at nine thirty on a Wednesday morning, just after I had finished writing my newspaper column and was getting ready to drive up to Westwood to visit Gillian at the UCLA Medical Center.
Between the Bylines Page 13
