post 10

• Garry Stockdale, the Polonaise manager, gave them one scoop. "I asked wayne for his registration fees," he said. "I told him you have to pay to play minor baseball. "See my Dad,' he said. I tell you, money hasn't changed the kid a bit." He pitched 5 games in a midget tournament in Oshawa, won the first 4 and lost 3-2 in the final.
• For his first 5 days in Edmonton, Wayne moved in with Glen Sather's family ("I've never seen a kid who eats like that one," Sather told reporters. "He eats more at meals than my whole family, and he's always up for snacks.") Then he moved in with Ray Bodnar and his wife. Ray was the brother of Jim Bodnar, with whom Wayne had lived in the Soo, so he was comfortable with Kevin Lowe, who happens to be a great cook.
• Mr. Poklington paid $20,000 on behalf of the club and another $20,000 on behalf of Wayne, which came off his signing bonus. That really made me mad. Phyllis and I spent half a day with a lawyer. He said he didn't think Wayne should pay anything because, after all, he'd only been in the OHA for a year and was such an attraction he brought money in for everybody.
• In 1982, the people of Brantford honoured Wayne by renaming the North Park Arena Complex the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre. At the official dinner, Wayne stood up and thanked everyone, including his former coaches.
• Pocklington phoned Gus and told him he wanted to sign Wayne to a 21 year contract- 9 years plus 26 year option, at $180,000 per year for nine, plus a $100,000 bonus. In a nice little prmotional touch, that would make No. 99 an Oiler until 1999. Peter called back and offered the same deal, only at $280,000 for each of the first 9 years, plus the $100,000 bonus.
• Wayne's birthday was on friday and now he is legal and No. 99 was 18. He could go into the pub with the boys and he could afford to buy a round, that is if he remembered to bring any money.

post 9

• As Wayne skated past, one of them shouted, "Let's see you get 4 in a row now, hotshot!". Wayne looked over at him for a second, then lned up for the faceoff. He won it, carried the puck into the slot and fired it over the goalkeeper's shoulder. Now it was 6-4. At 9:25 he scored again on a power play to make it 6-5. Brian wood, anther Brantford minor hockey product, tied it at 10:39, and 57 seconds later Wayne cut the Nats up 7-6.
• One day in November, a man phoned from Weekend Magazine and asked for an interview. Wayne said, "Sure, as long as it's over breakfast and you buy." That same day he had to do an interview with the Toronto Star, one with the Toronto Sun, do some filming with CBLT-TV, and finally a film with the Hockey Night in Canada crew. I guess he figured breakfast wasn't to much to ask.
• Since 1963, the National Hockey League Association had had an agreement with the Canadian Amuteur Hockey Association that it would not sign juniors under 20 years of age. That way the junior clubs wouldn't lose their star attractions early, and it gave them a better chance to make money and kept what amounted to an almost-free farm system pushing that talent along.
• There was a rumour that John Ferguson, the former Montreal Canadien star, was going to coach in Winnipeg. That scared Wayne a little bit because we'd heard Fergie was kind of rough, tough guy who like his hockey and his players just that way. We also heard another rumour that Rudy Pilous, the Jet's general-manager, had advised the team owners not to buy Wayne because there was no way he was worth the money, Mr. Skalbania was asking, and there was no way he'd be that big in the NHL, where the Jets figured they'd be once the leagues merged, which now seemed inevitable.
• In shifting from Indianapolis to Edmonton, Wayne hadn't missed a game. He'd played the full 80, and in this first season as a pro - a year he entered with a target of 20 goals and 40 assists - he'd wound up with 46 goals, 64 assists and 110 points. He'd finished third in WHA scoring and been chosen rookie-of-the-year as well as second-team All-star centre behind Cincinnati's Robbie Ftorek.

post 8

• Wayne stayed with the Nationals, playing 3 age groups above his years. Although he hadn't started until the season was almost 2 months old, he scored 27 goals and got 33 assists for 60 points and was named the league's rookie-of-the-year.
• Wayne didn't look good or well, so they took him to their own doctor in Brantford. He couldn't find anything , either. Meanwhile Wayne was staying at home doing nothing but sleep - and no matter how much he slept, he was still tired. He'd got home from school at 3:30 and go to bed. He'd get up at 5:30 long enough to have something to eat, then go back to bed. By 11 p.m. he'd be up because he was hungry, but then he'd fall back into bed and sleep until it was time to go to school. It went on like that, day after day.
• In the meantime, he was finishing his grade 10 at West Humber Collegiate, playing for the school basketball team and running cross-country. It was Christmas before he felt totally right, at which point he was so far down in the scoring race you'd have had to tunnel to find him. In the end he did have a pretty good season. The Senecas won the league title and Wayne finished fourth in scoring with 36 goals and 36 assists for 72 points, plus 75 points in 23 playoff games.
• One of the first things Wayne found out when he joined the Greyhounds was that the club had an initiation rite for rookies. They had to "streak" naked through the park, But the rookies werent worried. It had to be a joke.
• Here was this kid who'd just scored 3 goals and had 3 assists in a 6-1 win over the Oshawa Generals in his first game of junior "A", and he was still too young to shave.
• In pre-season Wayne had 31 points (9 goals and 22 assists) including 6 in his first game as a junior "A". He was 16 playing against 18 and 19 year olds.
• It ended up with Smith on top with 69 goals and 123 assists for 192 points, Wayne second at 70-112-182, and Ciccarelli third at 72-70-142.

post 7

• Hockey has taken Wayne all of the world. He's been to the Soviet Union, he's played in Europe, he's hopped back and forth across North America, and sometimes he's made the planes with seconds to spare and the door starting to close because, except for game trips, that's the way he is.
• But the longest, toughest trip he ever took covered only 60 miles, from Brantford to Toronto.
• In 1975, Wayne was 14, and by the time we knew we couldn't let things go on the way they had been. The pressures of being Wayne Gretzky in his home town, and a small town at that, were too much. It got to the point where we were afraid that he was losing his childhood.
• The MTHL said it was perfectly lefal for Wayne to play in Toronto, providing he had his release from the Brantford association and was residing in Toronto.
• Ron Sevier, president of the Brantford Minor Hockey Association, gave us that release and wished us well.
• Bill Cornish, Manager of the Nats' major bantam team for Wayne would be playing, had a boy who'd played on it 2 years earlier. Bill and his wife, Rita, offered to take Wayne into their home. He could live there, go to school, be in a good family situation, mix with the new kids, even get a trip to Europe with the Nats for a couple of exhibition games. He is living with Bill and Rita because his real parents think that it would be best for him to move out or live somewhere else for awhile.
• If we'd sent hime off to boarding school twice as far away, no one would have thought anything about it. People do that all the time, mainly because they want to give their children a better education.
• Wayne wasn't the only one in trouble. The parents of a 13 year old named Brian Rorabeck of Brighton, Ont., had also arranged to have their boy live in Toronto under legal gaurdinship so that he could play for the Young Nats' minor bantam team. So in fact, there were 2 similar cases, not one. But because Wayne was Wayne and had received so much recognition in his career, most of the publicity centred around him.
• We went around and round. They asked us why he was moving and we told them. One man said he understood what Wayne was going through in Brantford, that he had seen him play and seen it happen. We told them it was for Wayne's well being more than for his hockey.
• Wayne's father wanted him to move back to Brantford but Wayne didnt want to go, he decided to stay in Toronto and go to school and play in the junior "B" team.
• For the first time in months, he had a place to play and in his first game as a junior "B" he scored 2 goals.
• When he first joined the team, Wayne had tried to compensate by wearing defencemen's shinpads so that at least his legs would look bigger, but then he had to ditch them.
• Wayne played seven games with the nationals and had 5 goals and 5 assists. Wayne had a lot of things to learn - he couldn't make those soft passes he'd made in minor hockey, the league was to fast for that and he was having trouble getting the face-offs.

sixth post

• In their second tournament game, Brantford beat beaconsfield, Que., 9-1. Wayne had a touch of flu, but, except for 2 minutes in the penalty box, he played the entire third period until he took himself off in the final seconds. He finished with 2 goals and 3 assists.
• Now Brantford was in the quarter-finals against Verdun Maple Leafs, a team that included a young man named Denis Savard, who now stars with the Chigaco Black Hawks. For Wayne it was getting a bit scary. So many people stopped him on game night, he was afraid he couldn't get to the dressing room in time. Finally he stopped a policeman, asked for help, and wes escorted the rest of the way. Brantford won 7-3 with Wayne scoring 3 goals, 2 of them unassisted.
• All through minor hockey, Oshawa was Brantford's stumbling block. And the tournament semi-final was Brantford vs Oshawa. It was the same story. Oshawa won again. Wayne was playing defence as usual, but with the score tied at 4-4. Coach Ron St. Amand moved him to forward. It was a gamble, a calculated risk. Wayne finished with a goal and 3 assists and Brantford lost, 9-4.
• There are times, you know, when parents are a lot smaller than their kids. I don't know why it has to be that way. Jealousy, maybe, or frustration.
• As i mentioned earlier, Wayne was a heck of a lacrosse player until the other sports got in the way and he had to drop the game. He had a great touch with the stick. He could shoot, he could pass, he could roll off a check- a skill learned in lacrosse that he took with him into hockey. One day when he was 10, he had a gmae in which he scored 2 goals and assisted on the other 9, including 7 by 1 boy.
• Some people come knocking at the door asking for a autographed pictures like nothing happened or they will drop off books that have bee written about Wayne gretzky and say "Will you get Wayne to sgn thses and mail them to this address?". The neighbourhood kids make up for a lot of it. They find out when Wayne's home, and the come knocking at the door for autographs. Sometimes when Wayne's in for a fast hello between games and he'll be dead tired, and the temptation is to tell them he's sleeping.

fifth post

• Wayne was 12, just about to start his major pee wee season. He needed new gloves and naturally he'd left it until the last minute. so there we were in the sporting goods store run by our friend, Gerry Dallaway, shopping for gloves with practice due to start in half an hour and the rink is 20 minutes away. We were not exactly prepared to browse around.
• 6 months later, when Wayne neede a police escort to get out of one rink and a police escort to get into another, and the Turkstra Lumber team was pulling into the crowds of 11 thousand in Quebec City to see the kid they'd dubbed "Le Grand!" and "The White Tornado" I remembered that remark.
• In his first year he had that one goal. In his second, he scored 27, in his third, 104 plus 63 assists in 62 games. In 1970-71, as a 9 year old, he scored 196 in 76 games, plus 120 assists. People were shaking their heads and wondering how anyone could score that many. So the next year he played in 82 games and scored 378 goals.
• In 1972-73, as a 11 year old competing against kids in major pee wee he scored 105 goals. a few people nodded knowingly: it was a lot of goals, sure, but not compared to the year before.
• So it wasn't as if people were looking at Wayne when he was 11 or 12 and saying, "There's the next Bobby Orr."
• you've heard of the 50-goal season? When he was 11, Wayne had a 50-goal weekend in 9 games at the Hespeler, Ont. Olympic Tournament.
• In the summer of 1971, coming off the 196-goal hockey season, Wayne scored 158 goals and added 66 assists in 31 games for brantford PUC in the inter-city lacrose league, pitched and played baseball in the house league.

forth post

• When Keith was old enough to start hockey, Wayne was still at home. That meant twice as many practices, and twice as many games.
• Keith is almost like Wayne. Keith has a temper. If you cross-check Wayne or knocke him down he just gives you that funny little smile, then goes and tries to score the goal that will beat you. If you knock Keith down and you're going to get it right back in spades.
• There was a playoff game when he was 11 years old for a Magnetic Metal minor peewees. Keith is their big scorer. Stop him and you pretty much stopped the team.
• So there they are, the Gretzky kids, each one different, each one special as every kid is to every parent.
• From Wayne through Brent, we've made it clear that once you started something, you finished it. School project, sport, hobby, it made no difference. You finished what you started, like it or not, because if you do it early in life, you'll do it later, too. We wanted them to learn early: in everything you do, you follow through.
• Respect fo others was and is essential, of course, especially towards adults, but other kids, too. And you never laugh at anyone about what the are or what they do.