The Great One Skates Away

By Joel Stein

Mortality doesn't often present itself so obviously. Last Friday, Wayne Gretzky sat on a dais at Madison Square Garden, watching clips from his childhood and professional career, about to announce his retirement. "Sometimes you go to funerals, and sometimes you get to go to weddings," he said. "And to me, this is a party." Then he stopped himself from crying. "I should take my own advice, huh?"

At best it was a wake. "I played hockey for 35 years, since I was three years old," he said. "It's like suddenly they say, 'Give me your skates. You're done.'" After playing 20 seasons and amassing virtually every scoring record in pro hockey and then some (under "most points in a season," Gretzky holds nine of the top 11 spots), his own aging body asked him to hand in those skates.

Gretzky's career is a bit curious in that he did it backward. You're supposed to rise from obscurity, slowly dominate the sport, overcome adversity and go out on top, like that basketball guy. By the time Gretzky was 10, though, he was featured in a half-hour television special. At 18, his fame was part of the reason the National Hockey League absorbed the upstart World Hockey Association, where Gretzky was playing for the Edmonton Oilers. He had won four Stanley Cup championships with the Oilers by the time he was 27. He married actress Janet Jones in Canada's royal wedding, and a month later was sold to L.A. to teach the Americans about hockey and break his own country's heart. (A clearly troubled Canadian House leader complained that "the Edmonton Oilers without Wayne Gretzky is like Wheel of Fortune without Vanna White.") Gretzky moved again to St. Louis, Mo., and then to New York, but his quest for another Cup would not be fulfilled. The New York Rangers, a mess of a club, have been unable to commit to winning, so Gretzky decided to cut the tragedy short before people started to walk out of the theater.

This is not the first time Gretzky has considered retiring; he talked about it in 1991 and 1993. But each time he has proved too talented; even last year, he led the league in assists. But this year Gretzky has dealt with persistent neck pain from an injury, and though he's the best player on his team, he has seen his skills deteriorate. After beating the Rangers earlier this year, Buffalo Sabre Vaclav Varada said that stopping Gretzky wasn't challenging. The next time the two teams played, Ranger Todd Harvey chased Varada and punched him in the back of the head. This is a hockey player's way of saying the truth is sometimes difficult to take.

The Great One--a nickname so Arthurian it would have sounded histrionic on any other athlete--tried to avoid a farewell tour, but it came anyway, after the New York Post broke the news of his impending decision last week. His last game in Canada, at Ottawa, became a ceremony, with opposing players each skating over to shake his hand; and the p.a. guy, instead of announcing the three stars of the game as is the custom at every NHL game, called only one--the only real superstar hockey has ever had.

He was a most unlikely one. If the players did not wear names, it would be hard to pick out who was the greatest player of all time. Even in his prime, Gretzky wasn't very fast; his shot was oddly weak, and he was last on the team in strength training. As he said in Ottawa on Thursday, "Maybe it wasn't talent the Lord gave me. Maybe it was the passion." He would operate from his "office," the small space in back of the opponent's goal, anticipating where his teammates would be well before they got there and feeding them passes so unexpected he would often surprise them. For a cover story in 1985, he told TIME, "People talk about skating, puck handling and shooting, but the whole sport is angles and caroms, forgetting the straight direction the puck is going, calculating where it will be diverted, factoring in all the interruptions." Don't worry. That sounded just as confusing to most NHL players.

Before Gretzky, back in 1979, America only knew hockey as boxing on ice, a sport that could never take hold south of Route 80. He helped free the game from the goons and clear a path for the more skilled, European game that dominates the NHL today. He overcame his shyness to become the perfect ambassador: humble, accessible, nice and somehow impeccably earnest without being creepy. The biggest off-ice controversy he ever faced was whether being on the cover of Cigar Aficionado sent a bad message to children.

The league won't have to retire 99. No one has had the hubris to wear Gretzky's number in the NHL, the AHL, the juniors or college hockey. It has represented not winning, not intensity, but how awesomely subtle greatness can be. And that's not something most people can wear on their backs.