All I can remember is the slight, seemingly too-small man in blue and orange, and his vision. And his vision was a vision to me, a mini-revelation.
The way he would wait just outside the blue line, then how he would hang out at the red line until he could safely cross. The way he skated, in starts and stops, fast and slow and every gear in between, once they gave him that little black disc, and how he could make people miss him without seeming to make an effort. The way he scored twice that night. The way he'd slide behind the net and make passes out front. The way he could make passes through people, as if the defender and his stick weren't even there.
The people around me, in the top tier of the building behind one net (what better place to watch his plays develop?), were cheering for the Whalers. I was just being born then, so I was a Ranger fan in name only; it was just my third NHL game, and I'd clap somewhat more than politely when the Whalers scored (once that night). But this was the first time I was more excited about the game than about just being at the game. I was there for one reason, really.
Dad had asked if I'd wanted to see Wayne Gretzky play hockey.
Of course I did. Who wouldn't? This was the Great One. This was the one who had already scored over 200 points three times, who was already well on his way toward breaking records. People who didn't know what a hockey puck was -- they knew from Wayne Gretzky. I wanted to see what it was all about. I mean, I'd seen the Whalers twice, and I wanted to see just how much better this guy was than Ron Francis.
And I was fascinated. I saw everything that was possible in this game, from an offensive standpoint at least. I saw creativity personified in this little guy wearing a huge number. You watched Wayne Gretzky, and you saw the unbelievable. And then the next night, you saw something else you wouldn't believe.
I had been a fan before, but everything changed that night.
A love affair was born that night between me and a silly little game called hockey. It's given me tremendous sailing highs, awful ghastly lows, and every emotion in between. It's given me nights of great satisfaction. It's given me friends all over the continent. It gave me my first professional job, and so indirectly gave me my current job.
And I owe a lot of it to that slight, seemingly too-small man in blue and orange back at the Hartford Civic Center in the mid-80s.
Which is a lot of why Wayne Gretzky's retirement, announced April 16 and effective April 18, has frankly devastated me. And I have had an awful time trying to articulate why.
He's happy. He's so obviously happy. So we're happy for him. But we mourn for ourselves. We can't quite figure out why he's so happy.
Of course he isn't the same player that scored 92 goals in 1981-82. He's not the same player that, four years later, scored 215 points. But he's still got it, which makes it so much harder to accept.
He owes us not a shred, not a scrap, not a shift. He has given of himself without complaint for over 30 years. It feels a little uncomfortable even to ask him to return for another year.
But we ask anyway. Because we can't bear to think of the game without him.
The game will go on; it always does. And so do we; we always find a way, latch onto someone else. But it's unimaginable right now. What athlete has had more impact on us?
Because they are contemporaries, and particularly because their retirements will come just about four months apart, Gretzky has been routinely compared to Michael Jordan. But that's not the best comparison. He's more Ruthian. There are decent arguments that neither was the best all-around player to play his game -- Mays or DiMaggio for one, Orr and Howe for another -- but they both were the international identities of their respective sports, and both tore up their respective record books. While their challengers for the title of "the greatest" are speed or precision or transition or intimidation personified, Ruth and Gretzky each made their marks, dominated, in cold numbers, stark reality in agate type every morning. One hit 60 homers, the other scored 92 goals and then 215 points.
And once, when the guys who owned their respective teams really, really needed the money, the owners sold them off. But they kept right on breaking records.
Yes, the analogy breaks down on a personal level, and the end of Gretzky's career won't resemble Ruth's pitiful stop with the Braves, seeking a manager's job. But as Ruth took the game to another level after the Black Sox, Gretzky took a league that was still a niche sport without a television contract and made it halfway respectable. They brought their sports even more revenue, and so brought salaries into the stratosphere. Their charisma, though one was ostentatious and the other quiet and shy, was immense. And both were probably the most famous people in their countries.
And as a product of the celebrity machine of the late 20th century, Gretzky's life was an open book to us. He was the first, and really the only, hockey player that was visible in commercials. We knew about his friendships and his relationships and his childhood, tucking in the side of his sweater because he was playing with the older kids and it was too big (and how many of us did that anyway, just because; shot lefty because he did).
His family practically became family to us. How many players are there in any sport whose parents we know all about, whose children we could pick out of a lineup? But we have heard all the Walter Gretzky stories. When he was hospitalized, in trouble with an aneurysm, we felt his and Wayne's fear and sorrow. We giggled a little when Wayne got the babe from the Police Academy movie. And we celebrated in our own small way when Paulina, Ty and Trevor were born.
We had an insatiable appetite for information about this man. And when we came, he invited us in for more. He has always been simultaneously just like us, and yet not like us at all. He seems to be a simple, humble, quiet, soft-spoken guy, but one who definitely has the kind of talent we'd kill for. And yet you always got the feeling you could pull up a chair and talk about the Yankees with him.
But it was when you were completely separated that Gretzky shone the brightest, out there on the ice with four of his guys against five of the others (there wasn't four-on- four anymore, because he was too good at it). When you watched with wonder, stunned at each move, wondering what the hell he could think of next.
As one who followed the New York Rangers closely, I was blessed enough to see him night-in and night-out the past three years. I was fortunate enough to have been in the house when he scored his first as a Ranger in a brutal loss to Dallas, and to have been there when he scored three times in Game 4 against Florida and rushed over to the bench to hug his best friend, the Captain, Mark Messier.
I was also there this Feb. 1, when Gretzky, injuries taking their toll, could barely move in pregame warmup. He skated off with about 15 minutes to go, and we naturally presumed he'd miss his first game in three seasons.
But he played. He could barely move, but he played. Maybe sitting out would have helped him recover a little, but he played. The rest of his teammates were flat, but Gretzky, barely mobile, was still one of the best players on the ice.
We in New York saw him play with his buddy Messier one more time, and with Esa Tikkanen two last times (though we'll try only to remember the first of those last times). That in itself is an experience we will never forget. But we also saw the magic -- the passes off the back of the net to himself, the passes off the side of the net to a teammate, the miraculous little button-hooks at the blueline where you just waited, waited for him to be plastered, but he never was -- he'd always already found the open man, the streaking defenseman.
Every night, something new.
And then on April 16, something horribly new.
Paulina Gretzky wouldn't come to the press conference. She said she was going to cry too much, Wayne said.
Even as he said the words, we were right there with her.
We'll remember too much not to be affected by this. The look on his face when they got the Cup back in 1987, proved they were "Still the One." The tears on Aug. 9, 1988, after promising Mess he wouldn't cry, and then the subdued smile late that night when he was the first to pull on the silver-and-black Kings sweater. Gary Suter almost blasting him into retirement almost a decade ago -- can you imagine that? He was almost gone eight years earlier. The way he took over Game 7 at Maple Leaf Gardens (a night some of us, stupidly, were rooting for the Leafs). The not-so-veiled shouts at referees whose performances he didn't like. A perfect tic-tac-toe on the power play with Brian Leetch and Niklas Sundstrom against the Flyers in December 1997. Winning the All-Star MVP this year, setting up Recchi and Fleury, as he did with everyone from Jari Kurri to Alexei Kovalev, effortlessly.
It just is not possible to imagine this sport without him. Oh, we'll be there in October -- he made sure of that, in at least a little way, for all of us, as he did for me that night at the Hartford Civic Center. This silly little game has a hold on us now. But he won't be there. At best, he'll be sitting in the stands with Janet and Paulina and Ty and Trevor (if Trevor doesn't have a ballgame), watching. Just like us.
May he and his family have the greatest life possible away from the game. They deserve it, for all they've given us.
Just pardon our tears, Wayne. Your new beginning is our ending. And it may be selfish, but we just wish we could have you forever.
Because even though we know it wouldn't have gone this way, we'd always kind of wished we'd be able to ask our kids if they would want to go see Wayne Gretzky play. And then when we sat with them, high above one net, we could have watched the love be born in them, too.