I realize that this belated and nonabsorbent contribution won't help, but I may have the advantage on those other homage-spinners -- how many of them can say they once had dinner with the biggest hockey star who ever laced 'em up?

When hockey fans dubbed Gretzky the Great One, the intended salute was to his on-ice accomplishments. They are many and unsurpassed -- most career goals, most career points (goals plus assists), most goals and points in a single season, in the playoffs, in all-star games, bounced in off the goalie's ass, etc., etc., etc. But references to his play explain only part of Gretzky's impact. "Although virtually every age of the game has had its preeminent players," said writer/broadcaster Peter Gzowski, "no one has ever transcended it as he has." That there are now three National Hockey League teams in California and one and a half in Florida (Tampa Bay barely qualifies) is almost universally attributed to the impact of No. 99's 1988 move to Los Angeles. Until Gretzky arrived to provide the necessary class, charisma and sheer jaw-dropping achievement, hockey was merely a backwater sideshow in the hierarchy of professional sports.

In the United States, at least. In Canada, hockey is today exactly what it has always been: everything. There is really no American equivalent (although in some areas college football might exert the same power, and religion is big in Utah). Consider: The huge, government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation features prime-time playoff hockey from late April until late June on every single occasion a game can be scrounged up. That's every night, generally. Twice in the early rounds.

Those ubiquitous American institutions, sports bars, are much harder to find up north -- probably because a large quadrant of the Canadian sports brain simply goes dark over the summer. If Canadian capitalism were as supple and well-developed as its American cousin, sports bars would spring up here in makeshift tents with satellite dishes every April, operate until June and then fold up like small-town fairs. Only the NHL playoffs will fill a Canadian bar with upturned faces, cheering, groaning and throwing peanuts at the TV. And for the past 20 years, Canadian hockey has largely been exemplified by one skinny guy from Brantford, Ontario. Now he's hung up the skates. Needless to say, we're choked.

Wayne Gretzky fan? Click here to read about the Great One at BARNES & NOBLE

It was suggested in some of those voluminous tributes that Wayne Gretzky was just a regular guy who became special through sheer hard work. That's a swell idea, and there is a kernel of truth in it. Gretzky was not the best skater, hardest shooter or grittiest hard-nosed grinder. But neither was he ordinary. Remember when Robert Kennedy said, "Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?'" Never mind what your teacher said -- Bobby was talking about Wayne Gretzky. The Great One's on-ice vision suggested he had more eyes than a housefly, and his vision was wedded to an innate knowledge of the game that allowed him to anticipate the progress of every play. While everyone else on the ice was still trying to figure out where the puck was, Gretzky was already skating to the place where it was going to go.

At least some of that ability really did come from hard work -- that and a good, cheap coach. From age 3, little Wayne skated on a backyard rink made for him by his dad. Walter Gretzky would be classified as your typical tyrannical parent, driving a hollow-eyed child through endless hours of drilling, but for one thing -- Walt was really only trying to hang onto the leash. It was the younger Gretzky who most wanted to stay on the ice, some days for eight hours at a stretch. Walter's famous son has said many times that his passion for the game was his true gift, and it paid off in the development of sharply honed skills and a hockey brain capable of crunching data and spitting out psychic passes instantaneously -- Deep Blue on skates.

Walter and Phyllis Gretzky also taught their son humility. About the worst tag that ever stuck to the Wayner was the Whiner -- opposing fans would chant that nickname whenever Gretzky bitched to the referees about the ceaseless hacking and slashing lesser players subjected him to. Off the ice, though, Gretzky never betrayed the swelled head to which he was so obviously entitled.

Gretzky was no Joe Montana, a late-round draft pick who surprised the world. Wayne was a star from at least the age of 10. That's when he scored 378 goals in 68 games for his Brantford peewee team, eking out victory in the goal-scoring race by a margin of 338. (One of the most remarkable accomplishments on that team was made by another player: goalie Greg Stefan, who actually managed to reach the NHL even after getting the early lesson that a goalie can succeed without ever taking his finger out of his nose.) All through his teens Gretzky was watched closely as a rising phenom, always playing against older competitors until, at age 17, he turned pro with the Indianapolis Racers of the upstart World Hockey Association. Eight games into the season his contract was sold to the Edmonton Oilers. When the WHA folded the following year, the Oilers and three other teams survived to enter the NHL, and 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky was in the bigs.

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