Maurice Ashley (4:34)
Now, Brownsville wasn't a fairytale place to grow up. I mean, we had our share of abandoned buildings and gaggle of prostitutes and brazen car thieves and our drug dealers who would play musical gunshots every single night to remind you who was in charge of the neighborhood. Kind of like here at Martha's Vineyard. Mike Tyson, the boxer, he grew up in Brownsville. Brownsville was so rough, Mike had to get out of Brownsville. But lucky for me, I had found and fallen in love with the game of chess. And I played it every single day. I studied chess books whenever I could and I played with my friends. It was my altar in Brownsville that I had this game. And one of my friends, I was beating on, I was just whipping him like a stepchild. And he was, he got upset and he said, well, I know a bunch of guys who could crush you. Now, I'm from Brownsville. Two strangers meet from Brownsville and one will say, you from Brownsville. The other will say, never ran, never will. So I said, brian, who are these guys? And he said, well, they're known as the Black Bear School. The Black Bear School. So it's like picturing some peace pipe smoking brothers watching too many cowboy movies. So, like, well, let's go, let's see it. So he takes me to Prospect park in Brooklyn, and I see one of the most intense scenes. It's like 30 African Americans, soul music blasting, and they're all around chessboards, either playing or watching. And I come up and it's these legends I hear off the park. William Morrison, the exterminator, who plays in the style of Bobby Fischer. I mean, you make one mistake and he finds a flaw in your game, and he'll inject venom in you that no medication can fix. Then you had Ronald Simpson, a master tactician. And Ronnie, despite his inability to really study the chess books, he had the ability to get out of any chaotic situation. As Mikhail Tal, the famous world champion, used to say, drag them into the jungle where two plus two equals five. And only he knows the math. But the most interesting guy that they pointed out to me was George golden, the fire breather. Now, George had a way about him. He was about 5, 7, 5, 8. He was in his mid-30s. He had a little reddish hair, freckles. But George, when you saw him play, you knew he was a player immediately. It was the way he moved his pieces. He'd move the piece and it end up exactly in the center of the square every single time. And George had this great skill that you had to have in Brooklyn, was he was a great trash talker. Because, you know, brothers, when we get together, we got a trash talk. But in chess, there's a code of silence. You're not supposed to speak during the game. You know, button up. Correct, no distracting your opponent. So the great trash talkers had to have a way of getting around that code of circumventing it. And the best people will tell you there are three ways to do that. Number one, start by talking to yourself. So you'll be sitting there, you'll be like, okay, I could play Bishop G5, and he could play Knight F6. And if I take on F6, takes back, what am I supposed to do? This is confusing, man. So now they think either you're slow or you're crazy. And then the second thing you do is you start complimenting them in these crazy rants. So you'll be like, okay, Bishop G5. And he plays Knight F6. And then I play Knight C3 plays Knight BD7. And if I take on D5, he can take back on D5. When I take his queen, he plays Bishop B4. Check oh, this guy is good. So now they're feeling good about themselves. And then the last point of the trap, you get them to talk. So you'll say something like, man, you're pretty good. Where you from? Which grandmaster taught you? And if they answer the question, it's over, the door is open and you can trash talk all night. Now different trash talkers have different styles. Some guys will quote Shakespeare, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Checkmate, bitch. Other guys will have some mantra that they say over and over. Like Ralph Malf, who used to always say, that's what she said. And you'll say, what does that mean? That's what she said. That doesn't make any sense. That's what she said. You're an idiot. That's what she said. But George was different. George wanted to make sure that you understood that there was a mental chasm between you and him. That on the chessboard there was a Grand Canyon in between you and him that you could not stand on. So George, we get super intellectual. He started quoting chess books, but not just any chess books, the encyclopedias of chess openings. A five volume set, 500 pages each. And they say things like, well, don't you know this is the middle of the game, that this is the carol. This is the Panavadvinnik variation of the Caro Khan. This is code B14. And in this position, you're supposed to play a three so you can keep your light squared bishop. I mean, that's basic. And you're like wondering if he's just jiving you. But when you checked, he never was. And then in the middle of that, he'd be singing James Brown, and then he'd be decrying the return of Reaganomics. And then he'd say something really crazy like, don't you like the way my rook is penetrating into the rear of your position through the hole created by your separated pawns? And now you're so flustered, right, that you, like, blunder. And he realizes, he's like, whoa. And then he does his signature move where he gets up on the park bench so that everybody can see him, and he has his queen in his hand and he jumps into the air like Michael Jordan and slam dunks his queen on the square and says, checkmate. I wanted to beat George. I wanted to be George. But it wasn't easy to beat these guys. The Black Bear schools, they studied chess like rabbinical students study the Torah. These guys, their quote, and I later found out, was the reason why it was called the Black Bear School was because when you saw a black bear in the forest, it wasn't enough to injure it, you had to kill it, because it would just keep on coming. And so I play these guys and they just beat me and whoop me this way and send me home. And I'd study and I'd come back and they'd beat me again. And I'd come back and I'd study some more, and I' come and I get crushed. And I started looking for a weakness. How am I going to beat these guys? And after a while, I started to understand it, I started to see it. And what I noticed was that they liked to beat each other and study for each other's games. So they became very provincial, playing the same openings over and over again. But they didn't like to go out into the chess clubs, the Manhattan Chess Club, the Marshall Chess Club, where everybody was in suits and ties and you saw the grandmasters come and international masters come and play.
