In the Summer of ’72, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky made it cool to play chess
Published: Sunday, August 12, 2012, 6:19 PM
Updated: Sunday, August 12, 2012, 6:35 PM
By Ron Chimelis, The Republican
Forty years ago this summer, I experienced an exhilarating phenomenon I will not see again in my lifetime.
For two glorious months, in July and August of 1972, chess was cool.
Chess is my best sport, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen me play other sports. Not everyone considers chess a sport, but it’s been a Chimelis family tradition that is now being carried on by my daughter, who has the potential to be the best of us all.
Even the uneducated majority that disdains chess, however, took a different view in the summer of ’72. That was when Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky played for the world championship in Iceland.
The 40th anniversary brings back memories of a magical time for any of us who played competitive chess.
For a few weeks, playing chess was not something a high school male had to be embarrassed about, like having zits or being the last in your group without a learner’s permit.
Greg Bell always understood this. I was a good player, if I don’t mind saying so, but the one player in our high school league I could not beat – the New York Yankees to my Boston Red Sox – was Bell, who is now an attorney in his hometown of Ludlow.
Working on a sports story several years ago, I called Bell, who had become a supervisor of youth baseball umpires. I figured it could not possibly be the same chess-playing Bell from high school.
This Greg Bell had been an outstanding baseball player. That made him far too cool to ever consider playing chess.
“Yep, I’m the same guy,” he said, correcting me. From this phone call, I learned two truths.
One was that Bell had been quite a bit more mature and well-adjusted as a teenager than I had been.
The other is that the 40th anniversary of Fischer-Spassky is a nostalgic moment for Bell, myself and chess players everywhere.
Nowadays, the only chess matches that make news occur when a computer beats a human, leaving us to ask if machines are taking over the world. Otherwise, chess is rivaled only by Scrabble and Rubic’s Cube as decidedly dweeby to the masses.
Full article here.
Nakamura is clearly better.