This is hardly in my wheelhouse and outside the normal subject matter of the website, but in a Wide World of Sports way it deserves some attention.  I know it seems weird, but there was a time that chess was actually considered a sport, and most of that credit has to go to Bobby Fischer.

If you didn't grow up in the 70's or early 80's, it's hard to understand the general attitude of Americans towards the former Soviet Union.  For many reasons, be they political differences, social differences, or just general wonder that we didn't know what the heck was going on over there, Americans felt equal parts hatred and fear of the "Russian" people in ways that social studies textbooks simply can't convey.  Americans truly felt that the U.S.S.R. was becoming their equal, and the fear of the Communist giant made us want to beat them in every way possible.  Given that the U.S.S.R. had been dominant for over 20 years in chess, having a grand master like Bobby Fischer was just what America needed to beat them at their own game.

When Fischer defeated world champion Boris Spassky in 1972, it gave the United States a victory that, while not nearly as large of an upset as the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's victory over the U.S.S.R., was galvanizing for the country.  The match, which lasted from July through September, was also set against the background of the U.S./U.S.S.R. Olympic basketball finals, easily the greatest travesty in modern sports history.  This win helped ease the pain somewhat of that defeat.

Sadly, Fischer dropped off the international radar soon after his victory and spent the rest of his years in relative obscurity.  His later years were marked by fits of erratic behavior, anti-semitic statements, and a bizarre falling out with former friend Dick Schaap (which led to Schaap's statement that Fischer "did not have a single sane bone remaining in his body").  This was punctuated by his confrontation with Schaap's son, Jeremy Schaap, at a press conference welcoming him to Iceland.

Fischer died Thursday of kidney failure at age 64.  The chess world, in many ways, blames Fischer's indifference to the sport for its fall from popularity in the mid-70's.  With the kinds of activities that ESPN passes off as sports in the 21st century, we'll never know if we could have been watching the World Series of Chess, rather than poker.