This scheme is an ugly addition to Williams' immortality

MILWAUKEE -- Claude Passeau, 93, was having dinner, but to talk on the phone about Ted Williams, he was glad to be interrupted. Whenever you see Williams dance around the bases at the '41 All-Star Game, celebrating his three-run, ninth-inning, game-winning home run, you can glimpse Passeau as he trudges off the mound in defeat.

Williams called it "my greatest single moment in baseball." The clip will be replayed forever because baseball has named the game's MVP Award after Ted, beginning Tuesday night.

Passeau, like any old ballplayer, had his memories. "You know, Williams was the first batter I faced in that game and I struck him out. Nobody ever mentions that," said Passeau. Then, with a gruff chuckle he added, "But he came around again. I threw 10 pitches to him in that game. But they only remember the last one."

Final memories tend to leave a lasting impression. And, like many in baseball, Passeau is outraged at what appears to be Williams's final controversial memory.

According to angry family members, the Hall of Famer's son, John Henry Williams, had his father's body flown from a Florida funeral parlor to Arizona. There, the famous hitter, aviator and American icon was apparently drained of blood, filled with a special freezing solution and floated inside a tube containing incredibly cold liquid nitrogen.

The purpose of the process, called cryonics, is to thaw the body in some future decade or century, in hopes of perhaps bringing it back to life with some as-yet-undreamed technology. In other words, it's either pseudo-science verging on fantasy or a cynical scam with a $28,000 to $120,000 price tag.

If Williams comes back to hit in the 3002 All-Star Game, don't expect Passeau to pitch to him. Like most of baseball, Passeau has learned about the cryonics controversy. Like many, he's disgusted.

"Oh, I heard it. That's terrible. That's the worst thing you could possibly do to someone. I hope they don't succeed (in administering the process to Williams)," Passeau said. "Bringing people back to life ... that's nonsense."

Unless something changes in Williams's family, the All-Star Game here may serve as his funeral. At least, the game in Miller Park may provide the nation with a formal occasion to tip its hat for the last time to the man who would never tip his.

In 1999, Joe DiMaggio had a solemn church funeral in San Francisco just blocks from the park where he'd learned to play baseball. Many of the sport's top officials and former players attended and his fans, from great-grandfathers to children, quietly lined the streets to pay tribute to the Yankee Clipper. DiMaggio's death was handled with the same high-style, restraint and privacy that characterized him.

Williams was obsessed by his passions--baseball, fishing and aviation. But he often fared less well in family dealings; he was married three times and was estranged from his oldest daughter. The tributes here from his baseball family may be his epitaph. Maybe that's appropriate, because it's starting to look like baseball really was Williams's home.

Because of the bitter family dispute over Williams body, no funeral services are planned. His daughter by his first wife, Barbara Joyce Williams Ferrell, wants him cremated. Several baseball colleagues say he wanted his ashes scattered, presumably in the Florida Keys which he loved. "I will rescue my father's body (from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation)," Ferrell has been quoted as saying.

John Henry Williams, Ted's son by his third wife, has been a subject of speculation within the game in recent years. He's a 33-year-old minor leaguer in the Red Sox chain. He either helped, or largely controlled, his father in recent years. And he was either a blessing, finding ways for his father to get income from his fame, or a commercializer of that name, depending on your perspective.

Perhaps it's lucky that Williams only had three children, for what should have been a dignified farewell has become a parody of some dysfunctional family on a Jerry Springer episode: "Sis, I Iced Dad." What's next? A nationwide Internet vote?

Though it's possible Williams authorized the cryonics process, his death now echoes the same kind of tacky headlines that humiliated him so badly as a young player. Then, Boston newspapers claimed to dig up embarrassing evidence that Williams gave little financial support to his mother, a Salvation Army worker known in San Diego as Salvation Mary. Williams's fury over what he considered an invasion of his privacy and a distortion of the truth, was the core of his 20-year feud with "the knight's of the keyboard."

All-Stars and baseball executives here shook their heads sadly over the bizarre absence of a Williams funeral. "We seem to specialize in dysfunctional families," said one of the game's top executives. "At least with DiMaggio, the fighting (over the estate) didn't start until after he was buried."

A celebratory All-Star evening that might have been smeared entirely by talk of labor problems and possible steroid use by some players will now have a new topic: The Kid, Teddy Ballgame, The Splendid Splinter.

In the night's last act, the MVP winner will carry off a trophy bearing Williams's name. As long as Major League Baseball endures, so will his records and memory.

Perhaps, even for Ted Williams, that's immortality enough.

Thomas Boswell is a columnist for The Washington Post