Bobby Fischer, who was a big part of my early days in journalism, died today at age 64. In the summer of 1972, when I was an intern at The Ledger, the afternoon paper in Columbus, Ga., Fisher was in Reykjavik, Iceland, challenging the Soviet world champion, Boris Spassky.
Day after day that summer the match between these two players eclipsed even the presidential race that was coming to a head. Daily charts of the chess board were run on the sports pages along with the baseball box scores. And when Fischer beat the Russian, the reaction in this country was similar to the response eight years later when the U.S. beat the Soviets in hockey in Lake Placid.
A couple of months after Fischer won the title, though, it was the Russians’ time to celebrate. They won the Olympic gold medal in basketball in what has to be the most crooked ending of a game in Olympic history. Even Mark Spitz’s seven medals couldn’t ease the pain over that loss.
