TMI Thursday: Not Quite Bobby Fischer

One of the reasons for my trip home to Pittsburgh last weekend was to clean up my childhood bedroom. My parents recently put their house on the market so I needed to sort through what I wanted to keep and throw away.

Sea shells stuck in Plaster of Paris (is that the correct name?) from an art project I did when I was 5 = throw away.

Baseball cards, football cards, hockey cards, and even some type of Alf trading cards = keep.

A slightly dented plastic globe (not a nice fancy globe) that features East Pakistan = garbage.

A scrapbook with award certificates and newspaper articles I was in = keep.

The scrapbook brought back some positive memories, one of which I will share now. I was on the high school chess team. I’ve definitely mentioned before that I attended the same high school that NFL players Steve Breaston, Ryan Mundy and Jason Taylor (sort of) attended. Let’s just say that I was not fighting off girls because of my chess team involvement. Anyway, team is probably a strong word as we basically played each other and then competed in one annual tournament against 7 or 8 other high schools. As a sophomore, my team, consisting of all sophomores, won the tournament defeating the junior/senior team among those from the rival high schools. We were even featured in the now defunct Pittsburgh Press newspaper. I found the article and winning certificate in the scrapbook.

This brings me to a negative memory found in the scrapbook. As a senior, I was bumped from the #1 team for a sophomore despite the fact that we won the previous two years. We went back-to-back and were going for a third straight title. How could they break up the Fab 4? (No we didn’t have that nickname. Or any nickname.) Facing the replacement guy in the tournament, despite making a dumb move to lose my queen, I salvaged a draw. I won my other three matches and finished with the top score of anyone in my seat. However, my record wasn’t enough to carry my teammates, and the #1 team ended up winning the tournament. That meant that my former teammates all won 3 straight years. I was bitter, and as you can probably tell, still am. Of course, I decided to keep the scoresheet from this last tournament in the scrapbook because of my high score.

There’s no real end to the story here. That was my last competitive chess match. Except for the occasional times I play against my brother (I always win), I haven’t played chess in many years. I guess the fact that I remember a chess tournament match from 16 years ago is worthy of a TMI post. Don't feel bad for me though; I now write a blog. And I bet that my blog is better than anyone else's from that chess tournament!

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