Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, New Jersey, Sunday, March 23, 1997 - Page 66
Fischer is forever a chess champion
I remember the last time I saw Bobby Fischer. It was in 1972 at a mayor's reception in his honor at New York City Hall shortly after he defeated Boris Spassky in their epic match.
Resplendent in a very expensive green suit, he alluded to the whirlwind of activity in the wake of his victory: “The creeps are beginning to gather.” he said.
Shortly afterward, Fischer went back to Southern California where he lived a reclusive and impecunious existence for much of the next 20 years. When he finally emerged to play and win a second match with Spassky in 1992, time had inevitably eroded his skills:
“This is not the Fischer we used to know,” said ex-World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. “The Fischer who use to fascinate us with his play. That Fischer is no more, nor can he be.”
Pocketing more than $3 million for beating Spassky again, Bobby Fischer once more has forsaken competitive chess. But his fame and myth continue to endure, enhanced rather than tarnished — it seems — by his most recent incarnation.
Last month, the International Chess Writers Association voted Fischer a “Life Oscar of Chess” in tribute to his genius. His fellow grandmasters have been no less admiring:
“I have never met him, but he is one of my idols,” Vladimir Kramnik, one of the top players in the world, recently told a Belgrade journalist.
“Fischer,” said the late Mikhail Tal, himself a phenomenal wizard of the game, “is the greatest genius to have descended from the chess sky.”