Between the Bylines

A sportswriter’s deeply personal memoir of the love that turned his life around, and the struggle to overcome his wife’s tragic death.

Doug Krikorian beat deadlines and made headlines for more than four decades as the Los Angeles region’s most compelling sportswriter. His brash and combative style—featured in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Long Beach Press-Telegram and on radio with partner Joe McDonnell—shaped fans’ perceptions of Wilt Chamberlain, Tommy Lasorda, Muhammad Ali, Georgia Frontiere, and many others. But his hard edge was unexpectedly softened through a chance meeting with a British physical therapist named Gillian—and their subsequent marriage.

Sadly, their union would be all too brief, as Gillian fought a heroic battle against an incurable disease, eventually falling into a fatal coma on the same morning that terrorists attacked America in 2001. In this moving memoir, Krikorian reflects on a fight more brutal than those in any boxing ring, and the losses we face more harrowing than those on any basketball court or baseball field—and how, after enduring his grief, he picked up the pieces and decided to do what he’s always done best: tell the story.