When I'm 64

It seems like so much ancient history.

Searching for Bobby Fischer came out in 1993, which is now 14 years ago. And that was some 20 years after Fischer battled Spassky in an epic match in 1972. People forget that he was only barely 30 when that match was contested.

It was the height of cold war. The US was trying to play catch-up, with the Soviets having dealt with the first blow with Sputnik, leading Kennedy to famously issue a challenge to put the first man on the moon. And the Russians, were they ever good at chess! Americans weren't even really so competitive against the powerhouse Russians.

But Bobby Fischer was an unusual one (did he even go by Bobby, or was it some holdover from Bobby Kennedy?). He was a star junior player, the youngest American to win a junior chess title (at 13). Fischer played good chess throughout the 1950s through the early 1970s.

His victory over Spassky was symbolic, giving Americans hope that during the cold war, when it looked like the US had the weight of the free world on its shoulder, that somehow Americans could beat the Russians at their own game.

Then, he disappeared. Not literally, but certainly from the chess world. He grew increasingly paranoid, and frankly, bizarre. He rarely stayed in the US, eventually becoming an Icelandic citizen.

He only surfaced once again to play Spassky in 1992. Spassky! Was the man still alive after all those years? It probably said something that he challenged an old competitor rather than the best the world had to offer. He didn't try to play Kasparov and any of the top competitors of the day. It only showed that he could still beat someone that was his contemporary after all those years.

And he'd go back to obscurity, where he'd tried to evade the law. The US, apparently, had a law, passed by Bush senior, that said its citizens couldn't visit Yugoslavia, where this match against Spassky took place, and the US wanted to arrest Fischer for this. While visiting Japan, the Japanese held Fischer waiting to extradite him to the US. At this point, Fischer appealed to Iceland to become a citizen, which did eventually succeed because they felt the US and Japan were unfairly persecuting Fischer (which in hindsight, it seems very true).

As much as Fischer was initially criticized for his remarks about Sept 11 (where he noted that the US got what it deserved, partly because of its actions in the world) as being a unsympathetic and un-American (and perhaps the reason the US government seem so intent on having him arrested), his observations, deemed a bit crazy at the time, seem to be much more mainstream (although the sentiment of his views still stick to this day).

And he was only 64 when he passed away, with the vast majority of the career he was so famous for, more than 30 years ago.


Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?
When I'm 64?


It seems, now, there's no longer a need.

Rest in peace, Bobby Fischer.