A“That's the trouble, everybody is so concerned about keeping the players happy. Sports has become too permissive. The guys running things are too wishy-washy.
“They ought to be like the International Chess Federation. They have a world championship coming up and one of the players made a mild complaint, through his seconds, about some burned-out bulb on the stage.
You know what the tournament referee said? He said, “Tell that bum that the lights are good enough to see the board by, and if he doesn't stop bellyaching I'm going to throw him the hell out and award the championship to the other guy. I don't want one more peep out of that prima donna.”
Man, that's the way to run sports. Those chess people don't pussyfoot around. We could learn a lot from them.” ([Perhaps like, how to select a racist, Anti-American haven to isolate the match. Perhaps ignoring rules… BREAKING RULES, BRAZENLY, that otherwise permit players to demand removal of needlessly disruptive camera men, to which the Organizers brazenly then, feed a flood of lies down the media pipeline claiming the player was “breaking the rules.” Or, perhaps chess should be handled the way Spassky's totalitarian authoritarian knee-breaking regime keeps order.“])
Is the bum at Daily News, Longview, Washington aware people are paying top dollar to see the players at their best and not there for the interests of tournament organizers?
—
A Closing Thought on Soviet Sportsmanship:
Boris Spassky: “When we have all lost to Fischer, will all of us be dragged on the carpet?
Petrosian replied: “Yes, but not here.”
