It’s Not Exactly Graceland, but This Is Only Pittsburgh

In the wake of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ victory in the Stanley Cup finals, Mario Lemieux’s house in suburban Mount Lebanon, Pa., has become a tourist attraction. Although few ever see the team’s star center, the pilgrimage continues.

Most fans respect Lemieux’s privacy, but at least one groupie wasn’t content to look at the two-story stone house.

“She was going through his garbage,” said Nancy Weissman, Lemieux’s neighbor. “She was trying to be discreet, but I saw her.”

Weissman said the woman, who is in her 20s, has taken Polaroid photographs of Lemieux’s house every day since May 25, when the Penguins won the Cup.

Fast swingers: The average male golfer swings through the ball at about 100 m.p.h. Players on the PGA Tour range between 115 and 135 m.p.h., and women of the LPGA tour reach 85 to 120 m.p.h.

Iron Mike, the mechanical golfer used by the U.S. Golf Assn. to test balls, has a 109-m.p.h. swing.

Traveling team: How tough will it be on the Houston Astros when the Republican National Convention takes over the Astrodome next year?

A preliminary draft of the 1992 National League schedule has them playing 26 games in eight cities in three time zones and traveling 9,231 miles spread over 30 days. They do, however, get 15 consecutive games at home to open the season.

Trivia time: George Bush is the eighth president to play golf during his presidency. Who were the others?

No easy way: Mark McCumber, who tied for second in the U.S. Open two years ago at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y., was among the PGA players who had to qualify for this week’s Open at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn.

“You come within a putt of winning and two years later you have to qualify,” McCumber said. “I love it. That’s why its called the U.S. Open, not U.S. closed.”

Name game: Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Journal nominates for name of the week: Race driver Scott (Step On) LaGasse.

But can they post up? Did you notice the All-World League football team? In addition to the usual positions, it included an offensive and defensive Operation Discovery.

That is a special category for “players who were the best from other countries.” Selected were Phil Alexander and Victor Ebuebedke, both of London.

Change of pace: It’s Dr. Eric Heiden now. America’s greatest speed skater has put away his five gold medals from the 1980 Winter Olympics and become an orthopedist after graduating from Stanford Medical School.

“I don’t skate anymore,” Heiden, 32, said. “I live in California, and it’s impossible to skate there. I’m glad I stopped skating when I did and went into cycling. The week after I won all the medals, I finished second in the World all-around championship. I have a lot of fond memories, but psychologically I had lost all motivation.”

Pity the Middies: Navy’s home football schedule this year consists of Ball State, William & Mary, Bowling Green, Air Force, Delaware and Wake Forest. Where’s Caltech?

Point, counterpoint: During a handicapping seminar at Belmont Park, Steve Crist, editor of the new horse racing paper, the Racing Times, was asked if he had ever been hampered in his coverage of racing when he worked for the New York Times. Crist acknowledged that “the New York Times does not print racing entries because it doesn’t want to encourage betting.”

Whereupon, several members of the audience shouted, “Then let them stop printing the stock market tables.”

Trivia answer: Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, William Howard Taft, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower, who had a green built on the White House lawn and a driving range in the basement.

Poor sports? The Montreal Gazette did not send its hockey writer to the Stanley Cup showdown, presumably because it was an all-American final--Pittsburgh vs. Minnesota.

Quotebook: Amy Alcott, after taking a dive into one of Mission Hills’ lakes with Dinah Shore and caddie Bill Kurre after winning the Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament, was asked what she intended to do with her $90,000 first-place check: “Put a swimming pool in my back yard.”