19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

BOBBY'S GAME
Sirs:
My thanks to Robert Cantwell for a brilliant article on the world chess championship (How to Cook a Russian Goose, Aug. 14). Bobby Fischer has given new meaning to the game by expressing his great love for it. A man who loves chess as deeply as Bobby does deserves to win the title.
LISA CASTAGNA
Kings Park, N.Y.

Sirs:
Now that the smoke has finally cleared, we are able to observe the chess player Bobby Fischer truly is. Fischer has mastered both the art of chess and the very important art of psyching out an opponent. It is time for the humiliated and the angry to stand up and cheer Mr. Fischer for his outstanding performance. The Russian's goose is cooked!
MATT WESTMAN
Longview, Wash.

Sirs:
Bobby Fischer is eccentric, and that's fine because he is a superb chess master, which, apparently, is all that counts with most people. However, my nomination for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S Sportsman of the Year is Boris Spassky—for putting up with "Childe Bobby."
ELAINE McQUIGGAN
Franklin, Mass.

Sirs:
The dictionary defines sport as a pastime pursued in open air or having an athletic-character. It further defines athletic as "physically active and strong" and an athlete as "anyone trained to exercises of physical agility and strength." Why is Bobby Fischer on the cover of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED?
ROBERT F. TAUCKUS
Syracuse, N.Y.

Sirs:
I have been leading SI for a period of 10 years, but I find your interest in sport quite strained when you feature Bobby Fischer on your cover. Your magazine, in the main, seems beyond reproach. However, when you include intellectual jokes, I must draw the line.
JOHN CHOATE
Denver

THE COWBOYS' HOME
Sirs:
Your article on Texas Stadium (Some Home on the Range, Aug. 14) was tops. I have newer seen an article that so completely covered it. Texas Stadium is easily the best I have ever seen, but then its home team is also the best I have ever seen.
CROSBY WARREN
Avery, Texas

Sirs:
I relished your coverage of one heck of a stadium. From now on I'll think of them as the Dallas Wowboys.
RANDY FIKE
Portland, Ore.

Sirs:
I read your article concerning the Cowboys' new stadium with increasing anger and frustration. Another plush temple has been built so Americans may worship sports to a more glamorous degree. This is an indication of how far we have to go in rerouting our value systems.

Clint Murchison Jr. and other sports magnates and their community backers should consider the irony: while their sports shrines have been going up in many U.S. cities, the schools in those same cities have been forced for economic reasons to consider canceling entire sports programs for their students. Mr. Murchison and those like him would do better to consider the true meaning and value of sports competition and pour their money into local and national athletic programs instead of these unnecessary show-places.
MARILYN J. GILROY
Pittsburgh

Sirs:
Thank you for the article. It was an excellent social commentary. One only wonders what postscript archaeologists will attach to the dusty artifacts of American civilization when they exhume the Let-'Em-Eat-Cake Room of the Texas Stadium a million years from now.
WILLIAM J. ECCLESTON
Pascoag, R.I.