Mike Celizic

I feel sorry for Mario Lemieux. He was one of the greatest hockey players of all time, the winner of back-to-back Stanley Cups, and now he’s been forced to retire because of medical problems. There was a time when the retirement of such a legend would have commanded the top of every sports page.

But through no fault of his own, Lemieux is a victim of retirement overload. We’ve seen so many great athletes retire so many times only to unretire and retire again, it’s hard to take any of them seriously.

Like birth and death, retirement used to be a one-time thing. Now, multiple retirements are as common as multiple marriages.

Lemieux himself has been part of it, having once retired for nearly four years before returning to the ice in December 2000 to continue the career that he has finally been forced to leave again — this time, he says, for good.

He’s 40 and says that the game belongs to younger and faster skaters than he is now. There’s no question he wishes he could play on, which means there’s always a slim possibility he could unretire yet again if the doctors finally fix what ails him.

That’s unlikely, but it’s there. And so it’s hard to properly grieve his passing from the sport. After all, we’ve done it once before.

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Again, I feel sorry for Lemieux because of that. It isn’t his fault that retirement has been so cheapened. Unlike Michael Jordan, who had two practice retirements before finally getting it right and leaving basketball for good, Lemieux really had no choice either time he left the game.

Indeed, few careers have been dogged by such physical calamity as his. He’s a big man, 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, but a body that seemed borrowed from Adonis was remarkably fragile. He had cancer. His hips gave out. And now his heart refuses to keep time properly.

MSNBC TV VIDEO 'Super Mario' says goodbye Jan. 24: An emotional Mario Lemieux announces his retirement and has some advice for NHL players. MSNBC

I’ve never seen anyone with his skills. Gretzky was the greatest playmaker I’ve had the privilege of seeing, but Lemieux was the greatest scorer. He scored a goal on his first shift in his first game. He once scored short-handed, even-strength, on a penalty shot, on a power play and into an empty net — all in the same game. Watching him come in on a break against a goalie was like watching Babe Ruth waiting for a hanging curve to drop into his wheelhouse.

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