Bob Duff

DETROIT - My father was an Al Kaline fan.

A huge Al Kaline fan.

One day late in the 1974 baseball season — Kaline’s final season as an outfielder with the Detroit Tigers after 22 years — the Tigers were featured on Monday night baseball.

My dad wanted to see Kaline. He understood it was probably his last chance.

Kaline wasn’t in the starting lineup, but my father dutifully waited for an appearance, even though he knew he’d be up for work at 5 a.m. the next morning.

Ultimately, he decided it was time to get ready for bed and he headed for the bath, with one final instruction.

If Kaline were to enter the game, I was to inform him immediately.

In the ninth inning, the Tigers rallied. Kaline came up to pinch hit.

Wrapped in a towel and still dripping wet from the tub, my father reached the living room in time to see Kaline reach safely on a single.

An entire generation of Red Wings fans can relate to that feeling, because they’ve seen Steve Yzerman for the last time.

Yzerman wasn’t going to put them through the suffering of watching him deteriorate into a part-time player.

Monday, after 23 seasons wearing the Winged Wheel, Yzerman, 41, announced he’d reached the heart-wrenching decision to end his NHL career.

“I feel very relaxed and very comfortable about letting you know that I’ve decided to retire, to hang up my skates,” Yzerman said with a smile on his face.

There are many indications of greatness.

Yzerman’s innate ability to lead and his virtually unmatched talents on the ice were the obvious ones.

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His decision Monday, while certainly heartbreaking to the legions of Red Wings fans who adore him, was the correct one and an equal indication of what made him such a special player.

In his mind, Yzerman kept hearing that he could get better, that he had more left to give.

In his heart, he heard what his body was shouting incessantly: He was all done and could no longer give the Red Wings his best.

To a proud superstar such as Yzerman, this was not acceptable.

“Over the course of the last eight weeks, I thought a lot about coming back and playing, but when it came time to actually make the call to (Wings GM) Kenny (Holland) that I was going to come back and play, I couldn’t do that,” Yzerman said.

“I really felt to do the things I had to do over the course of the summer, through training camp and into the regular season and be ready to go, be 100 percent and be an effective and really good player for the team, I just felt that because of the condition of my knee, I wasn’t going to be able to do that.”

His numbers last season certainly weren’t embarrassing — 14-20-34 totals in 61 games — but they were hardly Yzerman-ish.

In his prime, he put up digits that were matched only by Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky. Yzerman retires sixth all-time in points (1,755), seventh in assists (1,063) and eighth in goals (788).

When Yzerman added defense to his repertoire, he won the Selke Trophy, making him the only player in league history to be named the best defensive forward in the NHL and record a 150-point season during his career.

“He was one of the best offensive players in the game, and he became the best two-way player in the game,” Holland said.