Wayne Gretzky, he’s my hero. He’s great. He’s the worlds (sic) greatest hockey player. When he retired he was so good that now no player is allowed to wear number 99 by the way that’s his number.
One of my kids wrote that several years ago and it adorns a poster with a picture of the Great One and it still hangs in our basement, next to another one on Pierre Trudeau and another on the province of Ontario and near one on Judge Begbie, the hanging judge (I think we hang on to these elementary school projects in an attempt to freeze time when our kids were young and cute, plus we’re too lazy to take them down and put something else up).
He went on to write about how Gretzky is great but remains humble and was born in Brantford so he’s Canadian and how he played for the oilers, kings and rangers (left out the blues and apparently wasn’t big on capitalization either), and how he visits kids in the hospital.
He also listed many of Gretzky’s accomplishments that likely will never be broken, including, apparently 50 goals in 25 games. That’s kind of funny because it’s actually 50 goals in 39 games, and it’s such an amazing feat that Gretzky himself thinks it’s the one record of his that may never be broken (although I would argue there’s a few more that are untouchable too). Apparently it’s so great that my son thought it needed to be exaggerated a little.
But that’s the thing about Gretzky, he’s larger than life, and at the same time he isn’t. He’s Canadian, one of us, from working class roots, but he’s also a star that revolutionized the game and transcends the sport of hockey, i.e. our sport.
The line on the poster on the wall that I particularly like is “he makes people dream big.”
Right on. Maybe not grammatically perfect, he does take after the old man after all, but the sentiment is well stated and succinct.
The reason for all this Gretzky gazing, of course, because the media is all over it and sorry if you’re tired of it already, is Wayne turned 50 last week and the milestone provided an opportunity to look back on an amazing career.
And, like Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe before him, it takes a little distance from their careers to appreciate what they accomplished, how they accomplished it, and put it in some kind of historical perspective.
I was telling my kids this week that he was so great that back in the day there was a no-Gretzky rule for hockey pools because if you picked him you would win, because he would have 100 points more than anyone else. Or some pools would literally break him into two, you could pick his assists or goals, meaning literally he was twice as good as anyone else. They were suitably impressed.
Of course Gretzky wouldn’t say such a thing. He would talk about how lucky he was to be on an amazing Oilers team and at a time when offence was the order of the day and so on and so on……And he was right but he was also the centre of it all, if not the reason for it all.
Yet he’s humble but confident, if a little boring and controlled and even a tad annoying the way he referred to himself in the third person a lot of the time.
But people forget he was a phenom since age seven at least. The pressure to perform and the spotlight of future greatness was placed on his slight shoulders at a ridiculously early age. I think it’s tough to imagine how difficult that was on him and his family, and yet they pulled it off in spectacular fashion and with class intact.
I remember him once saying that if someone told him he couldn’t do something it just inspired him that much more to prove them wrong. And there were jealous doubters all along the way.
“Sure he can score in minor hockey but wait til he gets to junior,” and then “sure he can put up the numbers in junior but wait til he gets to pro,” and then “sure he can score in the WHA but wait until he gets to the NHL,” and so on as he moved onward and upward taking the sport to new heights along with him.
“He makes people dream big.”
Indeed.
