Godzilla Had to Rise From This Slime

Stan Lesniak of Littlerock, Calif., will compete in Sunday’s Ironman Triathlon at Hakone, Japan. The 33-year-old developer has been training three to four hours each day, sometimes beginning with a 50-mile bike ride at 4 a.m.

Lesniak expects to benefit from training in the high desert heat. However, he told Bob Schaller of the Antelope Valley Press that Japan’s Lake Biwa will be nothing like the Eastside Pool in Lancaster.

“It’s all green and slimy,” Lesniak said of Lake Biwa. “You come out of it looking like the Hulk. You’re all green. Bill Bixby (star of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ television series) would really like it.”

Old money: This will come as no solace to San Francisco Giant owner Bob Lurie, nor will it interest Raider owner Al Davis. But for what it’s worth, Yankee Stadium cost co-owners Col. Jacob Ruppert and Col. Tillinghast Huston $2.5 million in 1921. For the 11.6 acres of Bronx farmland where the stadium was built, they paid $600,000.

So, as “The Yankee Encyclopedia” suggests, Babe Ruth’s popularity, plus the legalization of Sunday baseball in New York, may have pointed the way, but America’s most famous stadium was the house that private funding built.

Trivia time: Who hit the most home runs at Yankee Stadium?

Amendment to excellence: From the Associated Press: “(Coach Art) Shell succeeded Mike Shanahan after the Raiders got off to a 1-3 start and led them to an 8-8 record in 1989. But that was marred by the fact the Raiders finished the year with losses at Seattle and New Jersey, when one win would have gotten them into the playoffs.”

The Raiders never did match up well with the Nets.

Start your engines: When Mike Harris of the Associated Press asked actor-entrepreneur-race driver Paul Newman his opinion of “Days of Thunder,” Newman shifted gears and began praising his own racing film, “Winning,” made in 1968.

“Not because the racing footage was the best or anything,” Newman said, “but because the people integrated into the racing. And usually you find that people are inserted, or transplanted on top of, or glued to the story . . . If they could do a great story about racing, it would be really exciting, I think.

“I think the temptation to make a picture about the car ultimately overwhelms the human aspect of it because it would appear, on the surface, to be a much more cinematic impact.

“Great movies ultimately have to be about people.”

The shirt off his back: As a high school football player in New York, Rob Moore would visit Jet practices to watch his favorite player, Wesley Walker.

The Jets, who chose the former Syracuse wide receiver in Tuesday’s NFL supplemental draft, announced that Moore will wear Walker’s old jersey number, 85.

No coincidence. It was Walker’s idea.

Speech therapy: These trades, from “The Baseball Encyclopedia,” may or may not have pleased the teams involved, but they left more than one announcer tongue-tied: George Burns for Bill Wambsganss (1924); Bob Smith for Wes Schulmerich (1930); Eddie Miller for Johnny Wyrostek (1948); Jimmie Hall for Terry Bongiovanni (1969); Ed Herrmann for Fred Anyzeski (1975).

Trivia answer: Mickey Mantle, 266.

Quotebook: General Manager John McVay of the San Francisco 49ers, on why Lyle Alzado, Bert Jones and Mark Gastineau are making, or considering, comebacks: “Nolan Ryan.”