Chapter Two

“I’ve got Bucky Dent’s Belly-button”

Douglas Alan Kaplan, “Doug” to almost everybody, “Dougie” to his parents and older sister, “Dougal” to his high school as well as college buddies, worked as the local Sales Director for WFAN-660 AM in New York City, the premiere sports-talk radio station in the United States.  He had worked his way up as an account executive in both radio and television, and it was a job as much as Doug hated to admit, that fit him like the comfy moccasin slippers and New York Giants hoodie with matching sweatpants that he wore on Sundays as he attempted, usually fruitlessly thanks to his three boys and their various activities, to watch his beloved New York Giants break his heart once again.  His brother-in-law Jake would remind him that like all Giants fans, he whined like a Boston Celtic or New England Patriot not getting a call from the refs. Worse, Jake’s fortunes were tied to the far more hapless New York Jets.  Jacob Greenglass, who had married Doug’s older sister, Helen, was only seven years old when the Jets won Super Bowl III, and was in his basement playing “submarine commander”  in the giant box that the family’s Philco color television had arrived in, which by most seven year-old’s standards was a far superior way to spend one’s afternoon then watching the Jets upset the Baltimore Colts.  Unfortunately, it meant that his team’s only moment of any significance was missed by the oblivious actions of a seven year-old knucklehead.  

Doug’s wife, Kelly Crawford had started her career at WBAB, 102.3 FM, on Long Island as a sales assistant just about a month before Doug had begun his career in sales at the famous classic rock station.  Doug couldn’t help but notice the 5’2” green-eyed beauty, as did the other young male account executives, most of whom were looking for conquests in or out of the office when they weren’t attempting to get the various owners of the practically endless array of pizzerias, German-style delicatessens, bars, bagel shops, and dry cleaners that dotted the “strip malled”  landscape of Long Island in the late 1980s, (and of course still do) to purchase advertising time on the station that possessed more of a cult following than a broad base of listeners.   The ambitious and hard-working account execs found out the hard way that billing yourself as a station with an impressive “cult following” meant little to local business owners when it came to actually getting them to part with their money in order to advertise on WBAB.  Apparently being a cult follower of WBAB didn’t mean you were going to run out and get your potato salad at the local German-style deli just because you heard their commercial on 102.3-FM.

Kelly’s job was to provide support for the account reps.  Despite  WBAB’s status as a Long Island icon of rock ‘n’ roll, its relatively weak signal meant that it barely permeated the listening spaces of those classic rock ‘n’ roll fans who lived in Queens and Brooklyn, so every dollar counted.  It wasn’t so much that Kelly was better at her job than any of the other sales assistants who saw their employment with the station “terminated,” rather it was her positive energy, and enthusiasm that made her an asset.  She seemed to really enjoy her job, and appeared to be genuinely concerned with the well-being of the station.  Either because of this or in spite of it, Doug became smitten with her immediately .  She was attractive to be sure, but Doug loved the fact that she dressed up for work everyday like she was hoping to interview for something far more substantial.  In a world where designer sweats, an idea Kelly saw as an oxymoron, were becoming a thing on Long Island, Kelly’s petite but certainly admirable curves were usually fitted into a dress or skirt, accompanied by black stockings and black heels to match.  Her hair was big and had enough product in it to be considered a superfund site, but in the late 1980s on the south shore of Long Island this was the norm.  Doug also found himself amused by the idea that at 6’2” he was a foot taller than she was. In all honesty, he didn’t really understand why that was funny, but everybody either chuckled or reacted overly enthusiastically about the concept when they first began dating, so Doug felt that it must be a good sign.  Unlike Kelly who walked upright and proud, Doug, always a little uncomfortable with his height, slumped over slightly at the shoulders.  His dark brown mullet, which he often found himself defending in old photographs insisting that the style had been quite fashionable at the time, gave no indication of the follicle abandonment that would occur in the late 1990s, and his thick mustache offset his metrosexual lack of sideburns, again, staying well within the fashion of the times.

Morris and Fern Kaplan did not relish the idea that Kelly was an Irish Catholic, and not Jewish.  Upon hearing that her last name was Crawford, Morris exclaimed, “She’s Irish?  They’re so bigoted they hate themselves!”   Doug’s parents claimed to be open-minded and “liberal,” but the fact was that they repeatedly discouraged him from  dating any non-Jewish girls. This meant that Doug kept most of his girlfriends, especially if they weren’t Jewish, away from Morris and Fern.  While Morris wasn’t in love with the Irish girls on Long Island, he wasn’t a big fan of Italians either, stereotyping the seemingly countless amounts of Italian girls on Long Island as talanas, which while not an ethnic slur, wasn’t an overly complimentary term either.  It basically summed up an “attitude” that Morris felt went with being an Italian girl.  Pretty, but not too bright.  Okay for schtupping to be sure, but not marriage material.  Kelly, as Morris and Fern would eventually find out, did not fit into the mold of the Kaplan’s stereotyping.

Up close, Kelly’s sea green eyes and semi-freckled face demonstrated for all to see that this lass’s genetics had their home base in Ireland.   It wasn’t just her looks, as Doug was never a big fan of the button-nosed, freckle-chested Irish-American girls who populated Levittown High School where he labored for four years as an “underachieving” student,  it was her personality.  Kelly seemed to find great enthusiasm for all the interests that Doug enjoyed as well.  She was a Giants’ fan, thanks to her father who would pass away from the old “widow-maker” shortly after the Giants won their first Super Bowl back in January of 1987, as well as being a huge Yankees’ fanatic. She proudly displayed the poster of 1978 Red Sox scourge Bucky Dent, the one with Dent holding the bat behind his back with his shirt lifted up where you could see his hairy belly button.  Once made aware of this fact, Doug used it as a selling point in his efforts to woo Kelly, informing her that he also sported a hairy belly-button, and it was an “inny” to boot, just like the sexy Yankees shortstop of her dreams.  “You see,” he told her upon seeing the poster in her room, “I’ve got Bucky Dent’s belly-button.”

While never shy, Doug was apprehensive about asking the assertive Ms. Crawford out.  He shouldn’t have been.  Kelly couldn’t have made it any more clear that seemingly every interest that young Mr. Kaplan claimed to have, the attractive and petite brunette enjoyed as well.  While Doug had every intention of asking out the department’s sales assistant, he had been warned by his older sister, Helen, then a regional human resources manager for Sears, that office romances were risky, and if he were, in fact, to make his move, it could very easily make things very awkward if his assistant didn’t return his affections.  Luckily, a holiday party arrived, and buoyed by a few vodka tonics, Doug confessed his attraction for the forthright sales assistant who let it be known that she was waiting for him to admit as much, wondering what was taking him so long to ask her out or make some kind of move.  They left the party and went back to her apartment in Astoria, Queens, a quiet family neighborhood before it had become a haven for the hipsters, and she quickly demonstrated her physical attraction for Doug, leaving little doubt that while she wasn’t the kind of girl that went “all the way” on the first date, things were going to proceed physically at an accelerated rate in this relationship.  After only three dates, Doug began to realize that for the first time in his life he was in love.

Doug reveled in the dreamlike early days of his relationship with Kelly Crawford.  They would find hidden storage areas and rarely visited conference rooms at work to make love, excited by the dangerous thrill of not being caught, emerging from their rendezvous with the smirky confidence of two people who understood that they were having the kind of fun that most people only fantasized about.  

Although due to the intensity of the relationship it seemed much longer to both of them, Kelly would move on to a small advertising firm in Manhattan six months after she and Doug first began dating.  Despite not wanting to see her leave, Doug understood that this was the opportunity that Kelly had been looking for.  This was a chance to  finally try her hand in the world of advertising as a media buyer.  The young woman with the endless enthusiasm and can-do attitude was ecstatic that her career was finally taking off, and Doug, believing in Kelly’s potential put aside his own selfish reasons for wanting her to stay, and supported her in this circumstance.  Kelly however wasn’t sure about Doug’s convictions regarding her career and felt the need to explain it to him.  

“When you get out of college as a woman,” she stated to Doug, “they only see you as a secretary or administrative assistant, while men get to jump right into their chosen field.”

 “That’s not always true.”  Doug retorted, “Some guys start out as assistants.”

         Kelly ignored Doug’s response and said, “My days of assisting are over.  I wasn’t a marketing major at Hofstra to be some clown’s go-for.”

 “I resent being called a clown.” Doug said.

 “Sorry Babe, not amused.  This is important to me, which means it’s important to us.”  

Doug enjoyed the idea of “us.”  “I know, and I’m super happy for you.”

 A few months later, Doug would also move on from WBAB.  

He was told by one of the more experienced sales reps that television was more lucrative. He landed a job working for a television rep firm that sold advertising space on television, representing stations across the country with their national buys.  In other words, when a station in Yakima, Washington wished to sell advertising space for their commercial time during Cheers, they sold to brands who wished to broadcast their product nationally.  It was as exciting as it sounded, but the experience and training it gave him as a salesman was invaluable.   As he improved at this skill, he began to finally make a little money, but at the same time he also came to realize that television wasn’t really his bag.  He enjoyed the feel of local radio, and working with local businesses, and would eventually make his way back into radio getting a job for 1010 WINS before landing the job of Local Sales Manager with Z-100, New York City’s biggest top-40 radio station.  His success at Z-100 paved the way for the big job he landed at WFAN.

By the late summer of 1988, Kelly and Doug moved in together and got an apartment in Flushing, Queens.  While Flushing was considered relatively safe in terms of crime compared to many neighborhoods in New York City, it wasn’t exactly the Garden of Eden either.  In the late 1980s, Flushing housed one of the biggest “chop-shops” in the city.  (A “chop-shop” was a place where your newly stolen car would be taken and, “chopped up,” so the parts of your car could be sold for a tidy profit.)  For many who lived in relatively nice areas of New York City in the late 1980s who felt compelled to own an automobile, car insurance would be your second biggest monthly expense after your rent.  It was a trade-off when living in an area where there was relatively little violent crime.  Sadly, New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s seemed to  be hemorrhaging violence.  Areas where the streets could still be navigated at night without the ever-present thought of muggings or worse waiting to happen were seen by those who trafficked in illicitly-gained and sold auto parts as happy hunting grounds. Doug wasn’t sure how his Honda Civic classified as a desirable car, but somebody must have liked it since it was broken into three times in five years.  Once, after being bullied by his father and Kelly into installing a “Club,” a device that locked on to the steering wheel making it all but impossible for a would-be auto thief to drive off with a vehicle, an enraged thief and “Grand Theft Auto” wannabe saw fit to rip out Doug’s ignition leaving the car running, but making it almost impossible for an individual of limited mechanical means such as Doug, who was already on his way to work no less, to turn off his car.  An expensive, aggravating lesson.  Don’t piss off the auto thieves.

As for Flushing, Doug’s sales manager at his next job after leaving WBAB, Steve DeFrancesco, seemed to sum up the much maligned section of the borough of Queens quite succinctly when he stated, “Ah yes, Flushing, the worst aspects of city and suburbia all rolled into one loud and smelly enclave.”  Kelly believed that a two-family house, the kind that dotted the landscape throughout Flushing would seem less suffocating than living in a standard apartment building.  In addition, Kelly’s mother, Margaret “Peg” Crawford, made Doug promise that he would not allow her daughter to live above a bar or any other business establishment “in that filthy city.”  Apparently, Peg Crawford, (nee Conlon) didn’t remember her formative years growing up in the Bronx all too fondly, particularly her memories of  growing up above the poolhall that her father, Brian Conlon, purchased with his winnings as a middleweight fighter.  Brian had even sparred with Jake LaMotta, the local Bronx boxing legend, and Brian had become friends with LaMotta who served as an excellent neighborhood drawing card for his pool hall.  The two would pass time in Conlon’s pool hall schmoozing with customers and throwing back drinks.  It was a life that Peg Conlon wanted her daughter to avoid at all costs.

For a Yankees fan such as Doug, living in Queens, and Flushing in particular, was the equivalent of  serving a prison sentence right in the belly of the beast.  By the mid 1980s, the Mets, at least for the time being, had supplanted the Yankees as New York’s number one baseball franchise.  Talk of the Mets drove all of the discussion at the aforementioned WFAN-660, as well as dominating the back pages of New York City’s great tabloid newspapers, the New York Post and the Daily News, as well as Long Island’s own, Newsday.  At the time, controlling the back page of a local newspaper was considered paramount to assessing which of the city’s sports franchises actually mattered.  Mets fans were especially ebullient whenever they had the opportunity to remind Yankee fans about this fact.  Doug could see Shea Stadium outside his bedroom which was a daily reminder that Flushing would be a temporary stop.

It was not surprising that Kelly realized that living in Flushing for an extended period of time was not in the cards.  Perhaps it was their suburban upbringing.  The sterile placidity of suburban life on Long Island was neither exhilarating nor one filled with misery.  It was an existence that was bearable and perhaps even comfortable.  However, the young couple’s issues with Flushing went beyond their suburban roots.  From an ethnic diversity standpoint, Flushing certainly had its charms, as it was filled with a variety of enclaves made up of a multitude of individuals that spanned the globe, including Chinese, Korean, Pakistani, Italian, and Jewish, just to name a few.  But it was congested, hot in the summer, and close enough to LaGuardia Airport that if Doug and Kelly were watching television, and had put any kind of emotional investment into the program that they were watching, they had to keep an active finger on the volume button on the remote in order to compensate for the fact that approximately every 30-45 seconds, a jet passed over their apartment rendering all television, stereo sound, or conversation moot...as well as mute.

Kelly would eventually end up working as a buyer for an advertising agency where she would distinguish herself as a hard worker who was serious about her career and her man.  In an era where men still harassed their female coworkers unabashedly, Kelly let it be known that she was not one to be trifled with.  One time when Greg Anzelone, a horn dog self-proclaimed ladies’ man attempted to come up from behind Kelly and give her a shoulder massage, she quickly pivoted to her right and swung an open left hand at the fraudulent masseuse, striking him square on his right cheek, and then laughing loudly while exclaiming, “The humiliation will fade faster than the kick in the balls you should have gotten.”  

Kelly was feisty, tough, and rarely gave ground on almost any subject worthy of debate.  Kelly drove and inspired Doug to be a better person as well as a harder worker, and rescued him from his parent’s house.  Doug rarely thought about other women after he started dating Kelly Crawford, and despite the fact that she could and would at times drive him a bit nuts, he was happy and satisfied to go through life with “the little Irish broad,” as his uncle Joe the butcher referred to her.  “I see us having a great life together in a nice house on the Island,” he said to her one night while they were relaxing on the living room couch watching television.  “I want a life like my parents have, but you know, without the insanity and mishegas.”  

“I’m not sure about mishegas since I don’t have a clue what that means,” she replied, “but the thought of living our life together is exactly what I had in mind, Long Island or anyplace else.”

 He smiled and held her hand.  He couldn’t believe that everything seemed to be falling into place.