Super Mario for a Super Fan

I promised myself I would tell Mario Lemieux about the kid from Gardena. Hockey season wouldn’t be hockey season without the kid from Gardena. His name is Dean and he is more than just my pen pal. He is my Penguin pal.

Each of his letters contains a self-addressed, stamped return envelope. The last one included a laminated Pro Set trading card of Super Mario holding aloft the Conn Smythe MVP Trophy after he and the Pittsburgh Penguins had won their second Stanley Cup, accompanied by a personal appeal from Dean: “Please write back soon, because these stamps are crippeling (sic) me financially!!!”

The card accidentally fell from the envelope Thursday after a Pittsburgh practice.

“What’s he want--an autograph?” Lemieux asked.

Luckily, no. Athletes get hit up for autographs often enough without reporters acting as brokers. Inside the locker room at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, each player has a mailbox stuffed with such requests; each Penguin, that is, except Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, whose mail overflows a couple of large cartons on the floor.

It is easier for Super Mario to elude a persistent checker than it is an adoring public. He once took a companion to a Caribbean island to get far away from hockey’s hustle and bustle, to go someplace where the only skates anybody owned were roller. Being on some beach without a helmet on his head or without a bird resembling Danny DeVito on his shirt, however, did not keep Lemieux from being recognized by another tourist. Occupational hazard.

“No,” I said. “He doesn’t want an autograph. He wants me to write about you.”

Each of the kid’s letters have a similar salutation: “How are you doing? This is the 12th time I’ve written. I hope 12 is the magic number.” “This is the 15th time I’ve written. I hope the 15th time will be the charm.” Dean doesn’t want personal favors. All Dean wants is to read more about Mario.

After all, he wonders, how many players have won three scoring titles in five years? And two Stanley Cups? And two Cup MVPs?

“Yet he’s overshadowed by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Brett Hull and even by a kid who never played a minute in the NHL, Eric Lindros,” Dean protests. “What will it take for Mario to finally be recognized for what he is--the best player in hockey?”

Oh, I don’t know, Dino. Here I thought Mario was recognized for what he is--the best player in hockey. Even if No. 99 were still active, he might have to concede this point to No. 66. As for Messier, he, too, has championship rings on his fingers. And Hull has all those goals and that golden last name. And Lindros is the fresh prince of mid-ice.

But Lemieux, who sat out Thursday night’s game because of a sore heel, doesn’t exactly have a low profile. First thing he did upon hitting Los Angeles was to hop into a helicopter and chopper on over to a TV chat show. True, he doesn’t have a statue of himself outside Pittsburgh’s igloo, hasn’t done many TV commercials or married a Hollywood pin-up. He doesn’t rub elbows with Messier’s contacts at New York nightclubs and magazines. Nor did he turn an entire Canadian province upside-down, the way Lindros did Quebec.

All he has done is play hockey, and the man sure can do that. When he comes at you with that pterodactyl wingspan of his, his elbows seeming to graze the glass on either side of the rink, being a goalie must feel like being a crash-test dummy.

Lemieux, 27, won another NHL scoring title last season, even while missing 18 games. In fact, not since the 1988-89 season has Lemieux played more than 64 games in any season. That’s how good he is. The back surgery that cost him 50 games two years ago left Lemieux in such a state that, even when he returned, he didn’t practice. He just played. And Pittsburgh won the championship regardless.

“Even now,” he said Thursday, “I never practice much. Only once in a while.”

And Lemieux knows someone else who knows what back injuries can be like.

“We all miss Gretz, everybody on the team and everybody in the league,” Lemieux says. “The game needs him. I need to give him a call and tell him to hurry up and get better.”

They were the Magic and Bird of hockey, in many ways, Gretzky and Lemieux. They made names for themselves, helped lure TV contracts and generated new income and interest not only in two nations but in two American towns where, to some, hockey was something truant kids played when they cut school.

“I was 3 when I got my first skates,” Lemieux remembers. “They tell me I took to it right away. When I was 6, I was playing in competition. So I never had time for much else.”

And where my pal Dean is partial to Lemieux and the Penguins, when Mario was a kid his favorites were Guy Lafleur and the Canadiens. At 12 he got to meet Guy at a hockey banquet, and today they are old friends who keep in touch, like, oh, Dean and me.

“But no, I don’t remember writing 15 letters to him or anything,” Mario says, laughing.

He remembers much else. He remembers being a more mature kid of 19 at his first NHL game and skating onto the ice at unfriendly Boston, not knowing what to expect.

“I’ll tell you what made it a whole lot easier for me,” Lemieux says. “Scoring on the first shot I ever took.”

On the very first pro shift he ever skated, Lemieux zipped one past Pete Peeters. Today he is zeroing in on 450 goals.

And he is, yes, the best hockey player in the game today.

There. Satisfied?