I learned how to play chess in 1972. So did every other kid I knew. No kid in my neighborhood played chess before then, and most of them weren’t playing by 1973, but 1972 was Bobby Fischer’s year. He beat the Commie chess king in Iceland, of all places, and he was an American and we were suddenly Number One in chess. It was our job as insufferable American Number One-ist kids to play chess, so we did.

Eventually I moved on to tennis (where Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert ruled…we’re Number One!) and branched into many other sports I played as a teen. Bobby Fischer, meanwhile, became a serious hard-core freak, giving up his chess world championship, turning weird at a tinfoil-hat level and spouting anti-Semitic nonsense. I can’t think of too many chess champs who had warrants out against them or broke U.N. sanctions, but Fischer did both. He never de-weirded and he moved around a lot, popping up in the news every now and again when he did something just crazy enough to garner momentary attention.

Still, Bobby Fischer could look at a chess board and see art and music. He could see outcomes. He could predict actions. This gift might have eventually snapped something in his head, but he was a god for a while. And today he died.