Most baseball memoirs are written by the men on the field. This one comes from the aisle — and from a life that kept going for fifty years after the last game in Brooklyn.
1955–57 · Brooklyn
A Flatbush teenager living blocks from Ebbets Field sells hot dogs through the Dodgers’ final three Brooklyn seasons — the 1955 championship year among them. Boss: Morris Rothenberg. Wage: whatever the tray brought in. Education: everything.
Age 18 · Parris Island
A self-described below-average student who flunked out of college in a semester joins the U.S. Marines. Basic training at Parris Island, then Camp Lejeune — and, by his account, the making of a student: afterward, a scholarship, and the degrees started coming.
The Student Years
NYU — a bachelor’s in Economics. Stockholm University — a master’s in Economics, learned Swedish along the way. Columbia University — a master’s in Journalism. Plus a research fellowship at Southampton.
Wall Street
Economist and stock market analyst at Lord Abbett & Company. One year of it was enough — in his words, he found it boring. The numbers training never left, though; it became his beat.
June 1969 · San Francisco
Television starts at the very bottom: a summer-relief job at KPIX, courier by day, news writer by night, $120 a week. Not a reporter. Not close. He took it anyway.
Sacramento
KXTV hires him onto the news staff. He covers Governor Ronald Reagan’s second term and the rise of Jerry Brown — then leads an AFTRA organizing drive, wins raises for the newsroom, and is fired months later. He tells it on himself.
1978–2009 · Los Angeles
Sacramento Bureau Chief for five years — the last Los Angeles station to keep a bureau in the capital. Fifteen years a general assignment reporter. Ten years the Money Editor, with a nightly segment from 1985. On September 11, 2001, he was the first Los Angeles newsperson to report live from New York City, and stayed three weeks. He filed his final report in the fall of 2009.
2010–12 · The Valley
Patch brings him home to the San Fernando Valley — Studio City correspondent, then editor of the Sherman Oaks Patch. Hyperlocal before it was a business model, and he never really stopped.
2014 · PBS SoCal
He creates, hosts, and executive-produces a PBS SoCal series putting his two careers in one frame: an economist with a camera, explaining how money actually moves through Southern California. Emmy-nominated in 2015 and again in 2017.
The Dodgers, Again
Freelancing for SportsNet LA — the Dodgers’ own cable network — he produces a Dodgers-history series and interviews Roger Craig on Old Timers Day: the same pitcher who chased a smart-mouth vendor out of Ebbets Field fifty years earlier. Both men were smiling this time.
Today · Encino
He publishes the 818 News Diary for the San Fernando Valley, works through Doug Kriegel Productions, Inc., and is finishing a documentary on the financial abuse of older people — the Money Editor’s last big story. And now, an installment a week, the first story: the hot dog vendor.
The Record
Doug is an Emmy-winning reporter and producer. His 1983 KNBC series “Whatever Happened to Real Men” was honored by the Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards, the Associated Press (Best TV Feature in California), and the Los Angeles Press Club.
The Drive-By Economist earned Los Angeles Area Emmy nominations in 2015 and 2017.
The KXTV newsroom, Sacramento — where the reporting started
The Company
His production company — video and online production out of Encino, California — is the home of The Drive-By Economist, the Dodgers-history work, and the documentary projects. His collaborator since 2012: producer and editor Scott Goldrich, credited on both Emmy-nominated Drive-By Economist entries and the Dodgers-history series.