NOT EASY BEING AN ICON.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Well, I always said the day Wayne Gretzky gets mixed up in an illicit- gambling probe would be the day Harry Caray is revealed to have been a vindictive old jerk.

Thursday was a bad day in the sports-sainthood business.

It was jarring enough when reports out of New Jersey said Gretzky, the hockey icon, had been caught on a wiretap talking with alleged betting-ring financier Rick Tocchet about how to minimize the damage from his wife Janet Jones' alleged involvement.

It was downright earth-shaking when reports out of Chicago said Caray, the late Cubs play-by-play legend, is portrayed in a new book by former broadcasting colleague Milo Hamilton as a ``miserable human being'' at odds with his cuddly public image.

Gretzky, the Phoenix Coyotes' head coach, and Caray, who died in 1998, had little in common, except for the sort of reverence that made scandal and insult seem impossible.

Now we can say officially: Nobody that famous is immune to having their mistakes, and the mistakes of those around them, blow up into the worst innuendo.

I mean, I shudder to think what's next in the headlines:

Search of John Wooden's Ferrari Turns Up Heroin Stash and Knives

Or:

Needed to Score to Beat Point Spread, Pete Carroll Says of Fourth-Down Choice

Or:

Ex-Boothmate Claims Vin Scully Doesn't Think Kids Are Cute at All

None of those things could ever, ever, ever happen, not in a thousand million billion years. I'm pretty sure of that, even after this week.

Gretzky has been lionized with a statue in front of Staples Center. Caray has a statue outside Wrigley Field. Their well-sculpted images have suffered big chips, or at least their fans' sense of their invincibility has.

It's hard to judge from here if Gretzky really was involved in the gambling affair, other than after the fact, or if Caray really was mean to a fellow broadcaster, or to people of other stripes.

What's striking is how vulnerable both turn out to be.

Gretzky's best friend and assistant, Tocchet, is alleged to be involved in a gambling operation, and his wife, Jones, is said to be a bettor. Very quickly, this has gone from Tocchet's and Jones' problem to a Gretzky story. The worst insinuations are made.

An outstanding columnist, whom I read online, suggested that Gretzky's casual tie to gambling ``undermines'' his accomplishments as a player. Rhetorically, the prospect is raised that the Kings' victory over Toronto in Game 7 of the 1993 Campbell Conference finals was ``the consequence of a pre-arranged script.''

The columnist takes care to note that such suspicion isn't fair or logical. Yet there it is in print.

When somebody is as big as Gretzky, wild suppositions are part of the game. This just isn't as big a story if Tocchet is somebody else's assistant and Jones is somebody else's B-movie actress wife.

At least Wayne Gretzky is still around to defend himself.

Poor Harry Caray is receiving his brickbats posthumously.

They're in a new book by Hamilton, who called Cubs games alongside Caray on television in the early 1980s before going to the Cubs radio booth - and then to the Houston Astros, for whom he has worked for 22 years.

In ``Making Waves: 60 Years at Milo's Microphone,'' Hamilton writes that the first time they met after Caray moved from the White Sox to the Cubs, Caray told him, ``Well, kid, if I were you, I'd leave town.'' And the relationship got worse from there.

When Hamilton was hospitalized with leukemia in 1982, he writes, Caray told TV listeners he ``couldn't understand how a guy can take time off during the season.''

Hamilton goes on: ``You can imagine the temptation for me later on, when the sonofabitch suffered a stroke in 1987, to say something bad about him. But I didn't. It's not in my nature.''

No, obviously it's not. Hamilton's motives can certainly be called into question here, and Caray's friends have been showing how, ever since news of the book hit the papers.

But Caray's affable image has been dinged.

Are you sure you want to be famous?

What next?

This just in: The Oakland Raiders have held a press conference to name Art Shell as head coach. The Art Shell who coached them for six seasons in Los Angeles before being fired. In effect, Saturday's announcement was Al Davis admitting a mistake and setting out to correct it.

Al Davis displaying self-doubt.

Talk about messing up your image.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) NHL legend Wayne Gretzky has taken a lot of heat during a hockey gambling scandal.

Rick Stewart/Getty Images

(2) Broadcaster Harry Caray is portrayed as a ``miserable human being'' in a new book.

Otto Greule/Getty Images