Coach Babcock

“Tony never had the makings of a varsity athlete.”

- Junior Soprano

The Sopranos

            Between Vito and the blog, I don’t get out much. So I felt particularly lucky to spot Red Wings Head Coach Mike Babcock at Christina’s lacrosse game. No, Coach Babcock wasn’t making the transition from professional hockey to women’s high school lacrosse; like me, he was in Farmington Hills to watch his daughter play. Fortuitously, I had my new video camera.

            Bloggers sneak photos of celebs all the time. The hope is that the celeb will misbehave. If I was lucky, I could record Coach Babcock do something awful, like throw his Starbucks at the 80-year-old-lacrosse referee.

             That’s how millionaire celebrity blogger Perez Hilton – who I used to think was Paris Hilton trying to spell her name like a rapper – got his start.

            Nonchalantly, I extended the camera outward so it looked like I recorded Christina as she cut around the lacrosse field. But in fact, I angled the camera toward Coach Babcock, who talked, “Yada, yada, Lidstrom …” on his phone.

            It was very bright outside, and as I tried to find him in the lens, the crowd erupted. Christina scored. But I missed the whole thing because my camera was aimed at Coach Babcock, who I have not yet photographed because I can’t see him in the lens.

            My friend Pat walked up with a quizzical look. No wonder. Unconsciously, I had turned away from the lacrosse field with the camera thrust outward in front of me almost in the face of Coach Babcock.

            I whispered to Pat that Coach Babcock was behind her. By now he was really revved, talking a mile a minute, so much so that Pat couldn’t hear what I whispered. So I said it louder -- at the exact moment Coach Babcock stopped talking. He looked me dead in the eye.

            My daughter Beth appeared. She had witnessed the whole incident.

            “Way to be discreet, mom,” she whispered in my ear.

            Now, though I practically faced him, I had to pretend that I was interested in something else on the horizon. At the perfect moment an amazingly beautiful Golden Retriever, the Farrah Fawcett of dogs, appeared. I would aim my camera at this dog, as if all along that was what I was really interested in photographing.

            The lady with the gorgeous Golden set up her chair right next to Coach Babcock. He and the lady smiled at each other. She didn’t appear to care who he was, so I guessed the lady was his wife.

            The Golden performed like Lassie. It rolled in the grass, gave the lady kisses, and shook its feathered blonde fur in slow motion. This Golden was pure Hollywood, the stuff of a video blogger’s dreams. Only now I didn’t have the nerve to take a video of the dog because it might be Coach Babcock’s. Already he was suspicious of me, and I wasn’t going to press my luck with an Olympic-gold hockey coach.

            The lacrosse game wasn’t quite over when Coach Babcock left, without saying goodbye to the woman with the dog. By now I was pretty sure Coach Babcock and this lady weren’t married. So, not only did I not get a video of Coach Babcock, I didn’t get one of the blond, bombshell of a dog. Also, I missed Christina’s goal.

            On the way to the car, I verbally flogged myself in front of Christina and Beth. What the heck kind of blogger was I? I would never be Perez Hilton. Heck, I would never even be Paris Hilton.

            “Mom …” Beth caught my hand just before I threw my new camera into the pussy willows … “I’ve got a picture of you and Mike Babcock.”

            There we were caught on Beth’s I-Phone.

             Apparently the Perez-Hilton-gene skips a generation.