for 19 JAN 08: THE FISCHER KING

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: You may find this item humorous, serious, or a little of both - but we offer these thoughts from time to time, as we keep a seventh-day Sabbath.)

A good part of my upbringing died Friday, when I heard on ESPN Radio about the death of chess legend Bobby Fischer. The fact that a "sports radio" network would mention Fischer may seem unusual in itself. But if poker is considered a sport today....

I became interested in the game of chess in my youth thanks to Bobby Fischer. As a rising U.S. chess star, he had a monthly column in the Boy Scout magazine "Boys Life." I could maneuver knights and bishops a whole lot better than I could the ropes for making square knots.

Bobby Fischer's fame expanded far outside chess clubs in 1972, when he broke the domination of the big bad evil Soviets to win the world title in Iceland. The move-by-move breakdown of each game was in the daily newspaper in Kansas City. But no, Al Michaels was NOT in Reykjavik asking if we believed in miracles....

I was 14 when Bobby Fischer won the world title, but his magazine articles and public TV programs like "Koltanowski on Chess" already had me interested in his game. Suddenly I was ahead of a trend, and took advantage of it as best I could. I stumped my friends at chess, and it felt every bit as good as my older brother always beating me at Monopoly.

(For younger readers, I should note this was an era before video games existed. Primitive "Pong" did not come along until my last year or two of high school. And back then, "Grand Theft Auto" actually referred to someone stealing a car.)

The high school where I attended started a chess club, in the wake of Bobby Fischer's success. I was the occasional number-five player on a five-person team, which meant a couple of road trips to schools like the Catholic powerhouse Rockhurst. It was a touch like playing a college football game at Notre Dame - only in a cafeteria, with no spectators in sight.

All the scorecards of my high school chess career are thrown away now, but my career was average at best. I won some. I lost some. And one memorable loss in a meet got back to my Dad, because our team lost 3-2. Dad was breaking up with my Mom at the time, and heard about it through a friend at work. Maybe if I had hustled down to one of his bowling nights....

When Dad heard about my loss in a 3-2 meet, he asked if I done my best. I said yes, and that was good enough for him. There was no scolding or lecture - and no coaching, since Dad didn't know how to play chess. But that's OK, because he never really taught me how to play his Odd Fellows lodge favorite game of pinochle.

But anyway: Bobby Fischer indirectly led to that father-son bonding moment. But his impact was larger on me in another way - because during that 1972 chess showdown, he demanded to be off on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Some people probably considered it a "psych job" against opponent Boris Spassky. Make him think too much, and he might make a mistake.

But Bobby Fischer made that demand for a religious reason. At the time, he was the most-famous follower of a small Sabbath-keeping religious sect called the Worldwide Church of God. In fact, he was just about the ONLY famous follower - other than the top ministers who tended to dominate the headlines, and even guest-star one week on "Hee Haw." [True!]

Bobby Fischer kept the Sabbath with that group and succeeded. I was doing religious questioning in my teens at the time, and his example was one of the seeds which led to my attending the Worldwide Church of God for a summer during college, then full-time a few years later. If only I'd kept paying attention to Fischer's example -- as he parted company with the sect and became a reclusive semi-maniac.

(Sadly, many members of that denomination have left in recent years - including myself. It changed a large number of doctrinal positions, and even fired Georgia ministers who wanted to keep teaching the old beliefs. Freedom of religion doesn't always mean freedom WITHIN a religious group.)

I can't applaud everything Bobby Fischer did in his eccentric/bizarre later years. But I give him credit for getting me interested in a game which stimulates your thinking - and for helping to lead me to a religious group which did the same thing. If you've never attended a Sabbath-keeping congregation, I suggest you try it. Your ideas about God might be challenged. And we're not all maniacs - really.

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