Frank Brady - Endgame

Bobby sent Shepherd notes, attended live performances that the radio host gave at a Greenwich Village coffeehouse called the Limelight, and visited him at his studio at 1440 Broadway. After the show, the two would engage in a New York City ritual. They’d walk two blocks north and eat hot dogs at Grant’s on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, at the edge of “the Crossroads of the World,” Times Square. Shepherd remembered that they didn’t converse much, just ate. Once, Bobby did talk about a player he was to face in a tournament and kept saying over and over again, “He’s stupid,” without revealing who the player was or explaining why he felt that way.

Sporadically, Shepherd would mention Bobby on the air. While Shepherd didn’t play chess, he admired the idea of Bobby Fischer and what he was accomplishing. “Bobby Fischer,” he’d whisper conspiratorially as if he were just talking to one person, not tens of thousands. “Just imagine . This really nice kid, this great chess player, maybe the greatest chess player who ever lived. When he plays chess he is … mean! I mean, really mean!” On a few occasions Shepherd helped fund-raise for the U.S. Chess Federation, the non-profit membership organization. He did it for Bobby.

Bobby preferred listening to the radio rather than watching television. One advantage of the former was that while he was listening he could also be glancing at a board. He’d also heard that television emitted possibly harmful electronic rays and he was skittish about spending too much time in front of the ubiquitous tube. He loved the intimacy of radio. When Shepherd was on the air, Bobby would darken his room and have a one-way conversation that eased his loneliness. There, beside the glowing yellow night-light of his radio dial, chessboard at his side, chess books and magazines spread around the room, he’d let his thoughts drift.

When Shepherd went off the air, Bobby continued to twist the dial searching for other broadcasts and shows. Sometime he’d settle for pop music, which, if the volume was turned down low, still allowed him to concentrate on his board analysis. At other times, he’d hear late-night preachers, often of a fundamentalist bent, giving sermons and talks, usually about the meaning and interpretation of the Bible.

Intrigued, Bobby began listening more and more to religious radio programs, such as the revivalist Billy Graham’s Hour of Decision , which featured sermons calling for listeners to give up their lives and be saved by Jesus Christ. Fischer also followed The Lutheran Hour and Music and the Spoken Word , a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that contained inspiring messages. On Sundays, Bobby made a habit of listening to the radio all day, flipping up the dial and back. During one of these electronic perambulations he found what he was searching for: a broadcast by the charismatic Herbert W. Armstrong, on what was called the Radio Church of God . It was a condensed church service that included songs and hymns as well as a sermon by Armstrong, often about the naturalness and practicality of the scriptures. “He seems so sincere,” Bobby later remembered thinking. “He has all the right principles: dedication, hard work, perseverance, never giving up. He’s dogged; he’s persistent.” These were the same qualities Bobby brought to the game of chess. He wanted to know more.

One of the tenets of Armstrong’s creed was that you can’t trust the role that doctors have assumed. In one of the sermons in which Bobby became engrossed, Armstrong preached:

We take the broken bread unworthily if, and when, we take it at communion service and then put our trust in doctors and medicines, instead of in Christ—thus putting another god before Him! So, many are sick. Many die!

If God is the Healer—the only real Healer—and if medical science came out of the ancient heathen practice of medicine-men supposed to be in the good graces of imaginary gods of medicine, is there, then, no need for doctors?

Yes, I’m quite sure there is. But if all people understood and practiced God’s truth, the function of the doctor would be a lot different than it is today. Actually, there isn’t a cure in a car-load—or a train-load—of medicine! Most sickness and disease today is the result of faulty diet and wrong eating. The true function of the doctor should not be to usurp God’s prerogative as a healer, but to help you to observe nature’s laws by prescribing correct diet, teaching you how better to live according to nature’s laws .

Taken by Armstrong’s argument, Bobby sent away for copies of the sermon and distributed it to his friends.

Armstrong’s Radio Church of God grew into an international undertaking, the Worldwide Church of God, and eventually claimed more than one hundred thousand parishioners and listeners. Bobby felt comfortable with the church since it blended certain Christian and Jewish tenets such as Sabbath observation from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, kosher dietary laws, belief in the coming of the Messiah, keeping of Jewish holy days, and rejection of Christmas and Easter. In very little time, he became almost as absorbed in the Bible and “the Church” as he was in chess. On Saturday nights, after his Sabbath devotion, he’d usually go to the Manhattan Chess Club or to the Collins home and play chess all evening, and though he sometimes didn’t return home until nearly four a.m., he still felt that he should pray for an hour. He also began a correspondence course in “Biblical understanding” that had been created by the Church and was often tied in to world events as interpreted by Armstrong. There was a self-administered test at the end of each week’s lesson. A typical question was:

What is the basic cause of war and human suffering? A. The inordinate lusts of carnal man. B. False political ideologies such as Communism and Fascism. C. Poverty. D. Lack of educational and economic opportunity.

The correct answer: “A” [Bobby’s answer as well.]

Eventually, Bobby sent 10 percent of his meager chess earnings to the Church. He refused to enter tournaments whose organizers insisted he play on Friday night, and he began a life of devotion to the Church’s tenets, explaining: “The Holy Bible is the most rational, most common-sense book ever written on the face of the earth.”

He began carrying a blue-covered cardboard box wherever he went. When asked what was in it, without answering he’d give a look that said in essence, “How can you possibly ask me that question? I’m deeply hurt and insulted.” Week after week, wherever he went—be it chess club, restaurant, cafeteria, or billiard parlor—there was the blue box. Finally, in the mid-1960s, at a restaurant off Union Square, Bobby went to the restroom and left the box on the table. His dinner companion couldn’t resist. Despite feeling guilty at invading Bobby’s privacy, he slid the top off the box. Inside, was a book with a title embossed in gold: Holy Bible .

During this time, owing to his newfound piety, Bobby used no profanity. One evening when he and a friend were having ice cream sodas at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Sixth Avenue and Greenwich, a woman in her late teens kept coming in and out of the restaurant. Either drunk or high, she kept up a continuous babble of four-letter words. Bobby became very upset. “Did you hear that?” he asked. “That’s terrible.” He couldn’t bear listening to her any longer. “Let’s leave,” he said. And the two friends walked out, leaving their sodas unfinished.

6

The New Fischer