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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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 MARY CARILLO |
She's now among the best sportscasters on TV
of TheColumnists.com
I have a thing about Mary Carillo, the terrific sportscaster working Wimbledon these days. It’s because her mother, Terry, and I are an item. Well sort of.
When Mary was breaking in as a tennis analyst at USA Network some 25 years ago, her family didn’t have cable TV. They lived in Douglas Manor, just a few miles down the Long Island Expressway from me, so I invited Terry Carillo to my house to watch and hear her daughter’s commentary on a USA cablecast.
My television set was in the bedroom, so Terry and I settled down in front of the TV set, she on a sofa, me on the bed. It’s been a joke between us all these years that she is the only woman other than my wife that has shared the bedroom with me. We had a grand time because Terry Carillo is an enthusiastic person, and though she is Irish (married to an Italian) the Yiddish word qvell captures the oohing and ahhing she did just about every time Mary made a comment And then, as now, Mary’s comments were precise, smart, shrewd, informative.
Carillo has evolved to be the foremost female sportscaster and one of the best overall on television. She has progressed to toil for CBS, NBC, ESPN, HBO and other network entities. She has Olympics credentials, having worked events, hosted late night wrap-ups, opening and closing ceremonies. She will host the late-night shows and work the closing ceremonies at NBC’s Beijing Olympics in August.
I have noted her progress with some satisfaction, occasionally enjoying her cheerfulness at the US Open in New York. And I was impressed that she grew to do reports in depth on the HBO show “Real Sports” hosted by Bryant Gumble.
I enjoyed the well-received, recent HBO golf documentary, “Back Nine at Cherry Hills,” about Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan at the 1960 U.S. Open. And it came as a surprise when the credits identified Carillo as the writer.
“I like long-term story telling,” she said on the phone from Wimbledon. “We had to travel and interview people for 10 months. We did Barbaro before that and the year before we did Billie Jean King.” I learned she co-wrote with Frank Deford a documentary on women’s sports that won the Peabody Award. And she has written a book with Martina Navratilova.
She says she wants to do more of what she calls, “harder journalism-I like to think I am growing into it as I age.” She is 51, has two teenage children. She and her amicably-divorced and remarried husband, who lives nearby in Naples, Fla. have shared bringing up the kids.
Carillo is hard-working, a foot-leather
reporter. She is all over a tennis tournament, reading everything,
keeping voluminous notebooks, talking to players after workouts,
in locker rooms. Last week on ESPN she informed that Maria Sharapova
would like to carry the Russian flag at the opening of the Olympics
in China.
At Wimbledon the past several years she has rented a house with
Billie Jean King and they talk tennis into the night. “I
come home at 10:30. We talk about matches. I fire her up and
she fires me up. We talk about tennis, politics, everything.”
On the air, she is sparing. Bud Collins, one of her mentors, once had a memorable response when told he talked too much--as all sportscasters do, Collins responded, “Yes, I do. If I were you, I would turn down the sound during a telecast and play a Mozart piece.”
Carillo doesn’t need the Mozart treatment. “In tennis I think you set up the match, give some history, explain what could happen, then allow the play to unfold and get out of the way. At the most tense moments I do the least amount of talking. I get quiet in tiebreaks and end of matches.”
At NBC this weekend, she will be working with John McEnroe, who she grew up with in Queens, and with whom she won the mixed-doubles title at the French Open in 1977. McEnroe is a motormouth, who dominates any telecast. Carillo, who says she enjoys working with him, slips in occasional incisive tidbits and witticisms. I like it when the Douglas Manor kid says, “They are duking it out.”
Carillo’s so-so playing career was cut short by injury. “John is a champion,” she says. “He can tell what it’s like to play a big point in a crucial part of the match. I know what it’s like to choke or what it’s like for a player to heave into a towel after a loss.”
She is a sharp cookie, engaging, colorful. She once was asked whether she thought Renee Richards, a transsexual, should be allowed to play on the women's tennis tour. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Carillo said. “So what if she’s Jewish.”
For old times sake, I called Terry Carillo to find out how she feels about her daughter these days. Effervescent as ever, she said, “Mary’s amazing,” she said. “She knew nothing about golf, but she wrote that show. I don’t know where all that comes from.”
And she added a note. “I have been faithful to you all these years. I haven’t watched television in any other man’s bedroom.”
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted
June 30, 2008.
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