Friday, July 12, 2002 | 10:43 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
The deep freeze at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale already has 49 cadavers.
If his son has his way, Ted Williams will soon be No. 50.
Williams' body is already in cold storage at the Arizona facility that specializes in cryonics. There he lays, awaiting resolution of what is likely to be an emotional court case that will determine whether he should be thawed out in a century or so or be cremated and have his ashes spread across the Florida Keys.
Among the many unusual elements of this situation is that Williams could become the first man ever born in 1918 to play baseball in 2100. That's what his son, John Henry Williams, indirectly proposes as he attempts to have his father -- who was 83 when he died last Friday -- kept on ice until the science of medicine catches up with what might be regarded as the fantasy of today.
The Splendid Splinter, as Williams came to be known during his Hall of Fame career, may some day awaken to become the Splintering Splendor if he doesn't melt quite right.
Williams, of course, would be appalled to find himself in this predicament. A private man who guarded his personal life as best as a sports superstar and military hero could, he routinely kept a low profile when it came to public fanfare.
Yet here he is presumably all dressed up, and, if his son prevails, with nowhere to go.
He's not the first man to die and leave his family skirmishing at the wake, but he's the most prominent in quite some time. At the root of the problem are conflicting documents that are apt to be submitted to a Florida court today, one to be offered by the aforementioned son and the other to be presented by an irate daughter.
John Henry Williams, who comes across as exploitative to a fault, maintains he has his father's signature on a paper that requests he be frozen upon his natural death for prosperity. Barbara Ferrell, the subject's oldest daughter, says the more pertinent request comes in the form of a 1991 will that specifies that Williams' ashes be tossed about the Florida Keys.
She further alleges that John Henry routinely had his father signing papers at a time when the elder Williams was no longer mentally competent, the result of a series of strokes that left him debilitated.
Those with even an inkling of Williams' personal history have quickly sided with Ferrell in this dispute. She's also requesting luminaries such as former astronaut John Glenn, former President Bush and President Bush to speak up on her father's behalf.
It's hardly surprising to hear that Ferrell and John Henry, her half brother, have not been on good terms for several years. But the battle they're in today really puts the strange in estranged.
He should relent, given the obvious belief that Williams would never willingly agree to become a subject or a pawn in something as experimental as cryonics. The very notion that he would join 49 frostbitten strangers in an Arizona igloo for what may be an eternity is as unWilliamslike as posing at the plate after a home run or pumping his fists after a fancy catch would have been during his playing days.
Sedate and cool as a player, Williams would flip if he knew his son wanted him sedated and cold as a corpse.
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