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#319 – Larger than Life
HERSHEL WALKER & CO.
Hershel Walker, football superstar from the Eighties, has his autobiography coming out, in which he reveals that he suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder. This is a serious matter and, if treated properly in his upcoming book, could make fascinating reading. But several things struck me as funny about the whole thing when I read it in an Associated Press story on Saturday morning.
First, why is this news NOW? Walker’s book doesn’t come out until August. Simon & Schuster’s publicist is mentioned in the Associated Press story, but it’s a cardinal rule of publishing – about which I know very little but I know this much – that you don’t publicize a book too soon. If people go to book stores and can’t find it, they may give up looking. I don’t think this is a tidbit, interesting as it is, that will stay in the news for seven months. If the publisher didn’t leak this, who did? As great a player was Hershel Walker was, his fame is nearly twenty years old. I can’t imagine someone snooping around to get the “scoop” on Hershel Walker.
Second, the quotes in the AP story are a riot. They quoted his college coach, Vince Dooley, who said, “That’s all news to me. All I know is whatever personality he had when he had the football was the one I liked.” I know very little about Dooley but that sounds like a typical big-time college coach. It applies equally if the player in question was discovered to be a serial killer. The article also quoted Frank Ros, captain of Georgia’s 1980 national championship team. “I’m probably one of his closest friends and that’s news to me. …. He does 100 things at once and always has projects going on, but that blows me away.” Dissociative Identity Disorder is very rare, but “does 100 things at once” would probably be a common trait among people who have it, if you think about it.
Third, Hershel Walker having multiple personalities explains a lot. For instance, I never understood why the Minnesota Vikings traded five players and eight draft picks to get him. They never would have given up so much to get just one player.
DEATH OF THE FISCHER KING
Bobby Fischer, the only American world chess champion and one of the most brilliant talents to grace the game’s 600-year hold on popular culture and intellectual achievement, died Thursday, January 17, 2008, in Reykjavik, Iceland, home of his greatest triumph. He was 64.
The world is properly confused about how to mark his passing. In an activity that attracts the greatest intellects and games-thinkers, he was a giant. But he was also anti-Semitic, anti-American, paranoid, selfish, and some combination of mean and crazy.
For those of you too young to know Fischer’s story – he hadn’t played in sanctioned international competition for more than 35 years – it is remarkable. He was born in 1943 in Chicago. His parents divorced when he was 2 and he didn’t see his father after that. At 6, his older sister gave him a chess set and taught him the moves. He began competing at age 10 and in 1956, as a 13 year-old, he defeated Donald Byrne, then considered one of the best players in the world. He won the U.S. Championship in January 1958 – not the Junior Championship but the open championship – at age 14. He won the U.S. Championship the next 7 years in which he competed.
But some years, he simply did not compete. And his participation and results in the World Championship were spotty. Increasingly, he complained about conditions, berating and bullying organizers and competitors. He made escalating demands about conditions and pay and sometimes refused to show up.
When he showed up, however, he dominated. He made it easily through the Candidates flight for the 1972 World Championship, winning the right to play defending champion Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. Fischer lost the first game, then didn’t show up for the second game, forfeiting it. He complained about the pieces, the board, the hall in which the games were played, the cameras, the chairs, etc. Spassky could have won by default but acceded to Fischer’s demands and the match continued. Fischer destroyed the defending champion, 12 ½-8 ½. (Players receive 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw.) After the forfeit, his record was an amazing 7-1-11.
He then refused to defend his championship three years later, presenting 64 demands that included requiring that all people entering the room in which the matches were played have their heads uncovered. He went into seclusion for 20 years, returning only to play an exhibition “world championship” against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. He won, supposedly received $5 million, and became a U.S. exile, having violated the law against traveling to Yugoslavia then in effect. He spent nine months in jail in Japan in 2005 for a passport violation and lived in Reykjavik after that.
Though he never (with that exception in 1992) played chess in public and generally lived as a recluse, he became known primarily for his virulent anti-Semitism. He gave a foul interview to a Philippines radio station in 1999 about an international Jewish conspiracy and gave another Philippines radio interview on September 11, 2001, in which he called the destruction and death at the World Trade Center and Pentagon “wonderful news,” expressing his hope that the U.S. would be taken over by the military, synagogues would be closed down, and Jewish leaders would all be rounded up. (His mother was Jewish.)
I am loathe to ever say anything that could be construed as positive against an anti-Semite, but I think this has to be an exception. Bobby Fischer constituted about as much of a threat as Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. For instance, Fischer supposedly had all the metal fillings removed from his teeth because he worried about secret signals and controlling forces that might be channeled through his jaw.
He had no followers, no ability to persuade, and no means of taking action. I imagine other anti-Semites cringing when he appeared in public to launch a profane non-sequitur diatribe. The man gave anti-Semitism a bad name, which I think ultimately is a good thing.
Before he traded in his job as the smartest game-player in history to become an anti-Semitic caricature, he was a great and positive influence on many people, including me. I was 13 when he played Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. I had been playing chess for a few years and was thrilled that the world became ignited by chess fever. Chess became cool. My copy of BOBBY FISCHER TEACHES CHESS became dog-eared, worn out, and eventually fell apart. (I thought the book was so great that I bought it again a few years ago, decades after I played my last game of chess.)
Fischer stood for brilliance and excellence and game-playing mastery. He was regarded as an American hero when the world was drawn as us [U.S.] vs. Soviets. He was single-handedly responsible for the surging popularity of chess.
