Last month, the chess world was stunned by the re-emergence of a reclusive legend: Bobby Fischer would play a $5 million rematch with former Soviet world champion Boris Spassky on the Adriatic resort island of Sveti Stefan.
He appeared in an interview on Yugoslav television to confirm the report of a match to start Sept. 2, a noticeably older figure with a thick waist, a bald spot and a carefully trimmed red beard.
Could it really be true? Would the amazing, enigmatic Fischer really return? He claimed he would. The world will know Wednesday.
Prodigies like Fischer are not exactly news in the chess world, but Fischer had the unique honor of being the only chess player in history to become an international media darling. Twenty years ago, on Sept. 1, 1972, the lanky, 29-year-old Brooklyn native, Robert J. Fischer, rolled over the highly respected Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world champion. It was to be the last time he would play chess in public.
That summer still paints a vivid picture. Chess fever swept the country during the match, and even rock stations announced the results of the games. Duffers played out the moves on plastic sets while, for one unique moment in our history, a game played on a board with 64 squares became a litmus test of national pride.
In retrospect, the fascination was clear. The way we all saw it, a touchy, uncompromising eccentric was standing up to a juggernaut of Soviet intellectuals and thrashing them, singlehandedly, at the height of the Cold War. Bobby, as we were soon to learn, was merely being Bobby.
Former world champion Mikhail Tal of Latvia, who died this summer, once called Fischer ”the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens.” Fischer`s name is still spoken with reverence among the world`s 400-odd GMs-abbreviation for international grand master, a title created by Czar Nicholas II denoting a numerical norm on a worldwide rating point system. At age 16, Fischer was the youngest player ever to achieve this norm, a feat eclipsed earlier this year by Judith Polgar of Hungary when she was 15.
But the rosy picture of an American world chess champion and cold warrior would soon become cloudy and, finally, opaque. After winning the title, Fischer submerged, somewhere in the vicinity of Pasadena, apparently under the influence of Garner Ted Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God. He tithed a portion of his winnings to the church, but the relationship ended in acrimony when Armstrong`s prediction about Christ`s return failed to materialize. Fischer demanded a public apology and was livid when Armstrong didn`t deliver one.
In 1975, Fisher formally (and, some say, spitefully) relinquished his title to Soviet Anatoly Karpov at Baguio, Philippines, refusing to meet compromise conditions set down by the World Chess Federation and thereby forfeiting a $3 million purse set up by then-President Ferdinand Marcos. At that point he dropped entirely from public view, shutting himself up in boarding houses and private homes, frequenting study rooms around Los Angeles and, above all, avoiding journalists.
Tracking his activities these long years, one runs into a continual series of blind alleys, rumors and mystery. His friends simply don`t discuss him or are never trusted again. Los Angeles area chess players, some of whom may have had limited contact with him, are reluctant to do so as well, perhaps more out of empathy than respect.
Jack Peters, chess columnist for the Los Angeles Times, tells of Fischer once greeting grand master Eugenio Torre of the Philippines in a motel parking lot near an international tournament site, then disappearing just as quickly. Writer William Nack, who profiled Fischer in a 1986 Sports Illustrated article, staked him out at the Los Angeles Public Library, then watched him board a local bus, not daring to approach him. Says chess master Hal Bogner of Pasadena, a distributor of chess-related computer software, ”It`s irresponsible to dig up tidbits and lurid details, which create an incomplete picture of a man`s life. Fischer is a human being, just like you and me.”
No doubt. But what we do know paints a fascinating, if not always intelligible, portrait of a troubled, gifted man.
Anti-Semitic drive
Fischer was born in New York City in 1943, and raised by his mother, Regina Pustan, a physician of Jewish extraction, a onetime ”Ban the Bomb”
activist and an allegedly domineering force in his life. He never knew his father.
Perhaps coming from a medical family accounts for a lifelong obsession with health and fitness, an obsession shared, it should be mentioned, by a disproportionate number of top chess masters. It is less clear how his right- wing, virulently anti-Semitic views came about, much less the penetrating fear that the KGB might try to infiltrate his mind.
Onetime friend Ron Gross, a chess master and retired teacher now living in Cerritos, Calif., was continually kept abreast of an ”international Zionist and Jewish Communist conspiracy” whenever the two men would get together, and about Fischer`s belief that much of the world`s troubles can be traced to the two groups. Gross also tells of Fischer removing fillings from his teeth, so as not to pick up errant, potentially manipulative radio signals.
Otherwise, Fischer sounds pretty normal. According to Gross, he loves playing table tennis, eating Chinese food and walking in the park with a pair of headphones.
Gross` wife, Marilyn, describes Fischer as warm, respectful, affectionate and impossibly spoiled. Furthermore, he`s not a textbook bigot. ”Any Jew can be my friend,” he once told Ron Gross.
The two men are no longer in contact. In 1982, Gross committed the unpardonable sin of discussing him with a local chess writer, and Fischer
”fired” him. It didn`t come as a surprise.
”Bobby fired his mother twice,” says Gross ruefully.
Mysterious return
No one can really say just why Fischer chose this summer to break his self-imposed exile. The dissolution of the Soviet Union may have calmed his fears about the KGB, and the recent deaths of three people once close to him- Mikhail Tal; old mentor and adversary Sammy Reshevsky, a leading U.S. grand master; and Lina Grumette, a Los Angeles chess organizer and surrogate mother- may have touched his heart.
The unfortunate choice of the civil-war-torn Yugoslavia as the site-the match is sponsored by a Serbian businessman-does nothing to enhance Fischer`s image as a humanitarian. He insists that the matter is just chess related, and that he isn`t interested in the political implications of his visit.
L.A. Times columnist Peters does say that Fischer, a lifelong bachelor, has a chess-playing Hungarian girlfriend named Zita Rajcsanyi who is encouraging him to play the match. And there is always the matter of money-$3.35 million to the winner, $1.65 million to the loser.
Still, it`s hard to imagine that Fischer would be motivated by material considerations, after shunning fame and fortune for so long. He is a man who had the world at his feet, yet chose to turn his back.
In the background, and perhaps more relevant, is the gnawing question of whether Fischer can rise once again to the pinnacle of the chess world.
There are experts who think he can. He was never really beaten, as they point out; he simply relinquished the title. By many accounts, he still considers himself the world champion. The odds will be against him. World-class chess, like any all-encompassing activity, is a young man`s game, requiring a brilliant mind, physical strength, an iron will and the stamina of youth.
We lionize a George Foreman merely for standing up to an Evander Holyfield, but would we do the same for a Bobby Fischer?
Not likely. Fischer retired as a chess deity, but who will tremble if he returns as a mortal?
Not current world champion Garry Kasparov, not Boris Spassky, and certainly not the orphans of Sarajevo.
