“She’s a snappy little broadcaster.”
That’s how Mary Carillo, in her bubbly ‘n breezy way, would probably describe herself. “I’m one broad,” she might continue, “they couldn’t get out of broadcasting.”
Indeed, season after season, Carillo is right there in our living rooms, the world’s foremost female sports broadcaster. Billie Jean King is our grand, continually-celebrated feminist pioneer. But for nearly three decades, Carillo, too, has been a woman apart. Since they first called out “PLAY BALL!” women weren’t (and still aren’t) invited into the broadcast booth for the biggest happenings in baseball, football, golf, hoops or hockey. True, tennis is better. Mary Joe Fernandez, Pam Shriver, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin, Lindsay Davenport and others all make significant contributions. And for two weeks, BBC studio broadcaster Sue Barker — so official, reverent and reliably deferential — oversees the Wimbledon coverage. But even in 2010 there is only one big babe in sports broadcasting who is actually in the booth for the biggest moments of our biggest events. (With the notable exception of the Wimbledon final.)
Tall, thin and with a distinctive lope and locker room sensibility, Carillo adores laughter, has a world-class cackle, is a devoted (“there’s nothing more important than parenting”) mother and, according to broadcast partner Ted Robinson has “this wonderful mix. She can be very candid, very blunt and yet capture the human pathos. She can be so empathetic.” So maybe it’s no accident she has this thing for animals. She hosted the big Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, crafted poignant Olympic vignettes about Pandas in China and a husky haven in Manitoba and wants her own actual quiz show on Animal Planet. After one tough Andy Roddick win, she said he had to “grub it out and do that whole alpha-dog thing, do some barking and growling. You want to see a little foam at the mouth.” Then, during one particularly soggy Wimbledon, she explained that there was a bad bounce because “a worm probably came up for air.”
But forget animal tales.
At the core of Carillo’s success (aside from an often breathless brilliance) is a certain New York-bred street savvy and ready-for-prime-time skepticism. Carillo’s ethos: “No matter how cynical you are, it’s hard to keep up.”
The commentator who coined the phrase “Big Babe Tennis” called 5-foot-6 Justine Henin a “little roadster.” When one of her big babes unleashes a drop shot, she’ll tell us, “There’s that old finesse scam.” As far as Maria (“poise and noise”) Sharapova, Carillo once noted, “She’s not hitting as hard as she is sounding.” When asked to comment about John McEnroe‘s PC contention that broadcasters should deliver a message of gender equality, Carillo said, “I can’t. I’m too busy dabbing the tears from my eyes to respond.”
As for Anna Kournikova, with her diva-like sense of entitlement, Carillo said the Moscow native felt “everybody was there to serve her. Everyone was her underling. Her attitude toward everybody is ‘Peel me a Grape.'” Kournikova wasn’t the only aspect of the Moscow-related tennis-scene Carillo has ripped. She recalled that when her broadcast team was in Moscow, “we were paying off [everybody]. It was a joke how many hands were out just for them to turn on the electricity…We’d already greased them…The Russian mafia has been around hockey forever, and figure skating…there’s a very scary undercurrent of gambling in all [Russian] sports.”
The undercurrent in Carillo’s work is quite different. Continually delivering a certain entertaining staccato, she’s outspoken, candid, unafraid. Sure, her pushy prose can delight or, at times, infuriate. Not everyone is a fan. Robinson conceded, “She can go off the rails a bit. She can look at things a little sideways, differently from others. I see that as a good thing.”
Clearly, Carillo is appreciated on many fronts. Italian-Americans celebrate her heritage. Insiders applaud her passion for parenting her two kids. (She passed on broadcasting the finals of the French Open to be at her daughter’s high school graduation when, wouldn’t you know it, Francesca Schiavone‘s run to the Roland Garros title proved to be the most riveting, feel-good story in the history of Italian tennis. Mama mia!)
To feminists, Carillo is semi-heroic — sport’s answer to Katie Couric.
Never mind that as a Long Island kid, Carillo once gleefully sat on the bed of her pal and dubs partner — John McEnroe — reveling in her buddy’s emerging insights. Still, when the time came, when the rubber hit the road – Mac thought a woman had no place broadcasting big time men’s matches. Media suits and USTA bigwigs agreed. She was ignominiously yanked off her scheduled broadcast of a Davis Cup match. Wryly, she conceded, “They took the broad out of broadcasting.”
But Carillo soldiered on offering her own “broad-sides.” She characterized Roddick’s forehand as “middle of the pack. A lot of players have caught onto Andy’s game.” She has tirelessly criticized the women’s game for its ho-hum one-dimensionality, its apathy, lack of tenacity and conditioning. She did praise Martina Hingis, saying “there’s no one on court who knows more what an original thought tastes like” but added that while many players smile, when Hingis grins, it’s more like “rubbing it in.”
Carillo also was willing to mix it up with her fellow commentators. After Brad Gilbert asked, “Who’s this Dam-a-chow-ska kid?” Mary claimed he made every player “sound like he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.” And at the Aussie Open she and Shriver had a lively debate over whether Serena Williams skated after her U.S. Open meltdown.
Over the years, Carillo has not hesitated to comment on her fellow Floridians —the Williamses. Back in ’01 when the sisters and Papa Richard were heckled at Indian Wells, Carillo didn’t exactly sprint to their defense. She has been critical of the Williams less than stellar conditioning and commitment. After Serena’s U.S. Open debacle last year, Carillo thought it was a shame that the very next day the sisters were allowed to play the doubles final, which they won. She thought the punishment was far too lenient. She’s praised Serena’s serve, improved play and fighting spirit, and noted that she has “the most glorious body for this sport.” But when Serena said that she “didn’t have to work very hard to be a designer,” Carillo responded, “That explains some of her designs.”
It’s hard to know what Carillo’s greatest contribution is. She can deftly transform a deadly boring second round blowout into must-see TV. (During one match in Cincinnati, she noted that the aging Guga Kuerten “hasn’t lost any of the surfer-dudeosity…He’s a human slinky who has a back-swing that starts in Kentucky and ends in Ohio.”
An inspired Peabody Award-winning wordsmith, she can capture the brilliance of our best players. She succinctly noted that Federer “sure does things right on Sundays” and psychologically, like Joe DiMaggio, he “has a suffering in him that made him quiet in his core.” And when it was noted that all Rafael Nadal had to do to beat Roger Federer on clay was to hit all his shots on the lines, Carillo quipped, “That’s quite a strategy — don’t hit the clay.”
As well as anyone, Carillo can capture the arc of an entire career with a spare minimalism. Of Johnny Mac she confided, “I used to think of him as someone who would spray graffiti over masterpieces, but the way he’s parlayed his reputation, he’s become cuddly. He’s become a real grown-up.”
As for the arc of Carillo’s career, it’s clear that (as she’s gone from PBS, to the USA Network to ESPN, HBO, CBS and NBC), she’s the only American sportscaster who has, for the most part, shattered the (“gals need not apply”) glass ceiling in sports commentary. Long a self-assured occupant of what she calls “the big boy seat” in the broadcast booth, unlike any other woman, she has called countless men’s and women’s Slam finals. No wonder when she was recently asked what the first thing she would do if she were Commissioner, she quipped, “I’d demand a raise.”
Few couch potatoes would complain. After all, so many have enjoyed this game through the prism of Carillo’s singular wit and zippy (but knowing) wisdom. For nearly three decades, Carillo has, by far, been biggest sportscasting babe in the land.
*Stay tuned for Bill Simons’ lively Q&A exchange with Mary Carillo.
