In Memoriam: Robert James Fischer, 1943-2008

[thatcrazycajun]

He came to loathe the country of his birth and publicly said he wanted to see it wiped out...and ended up dying far from its shores. He was given, in later years, to brazen anti-Semitic rants. And he may never have recovered psychologically from the fall he took from the heights of global celebrity, becoming too famous and popular too young.

But for a while, many years ago as an earnest young teenager, he was an American hero and an international chess legend. And he was the inspiration for a musical stage play and a film about a younger champion coming up as the world searched for the next one like him.

Yesterday Bobby Fischer passed away at 64 in his chosen home of Reykjavik, Iceland from what at least one source reports as kidney failure. His 1972 defeat of the now-defunct Soviet Union's then-reigning world champion, Boris Spassky, was and remains the stuff of which great sports moments are made.

Comments

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

It's sad he died away from the U.S. because he was avoiding arrest here for something so stupid as playing an illegal chess match. :/