John Henry not acting like Ted

There’s one thing you’ve got to say for John Henry Williams. He defies description.

Just when you think this whole cremation-vs.-cryonics storyline has reached its zenith, something else happens to help it dip to new lows.

The most frequently asked, sports-related question I’ve heard the last two weeks is “What do you think about Ted Williams’ son?”

Think? I honestly don’t know. Feel? Definite disgust.

“The Kid’s” son seems to have less redemptive hope than Ebeneezer Scrooge, before the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future visited. It’s easy to think of him as ignorant, but the man is well-educated (University of Maine’s Class of 1991) and has done well for himself, albeit by turning his father into a cottage industry.

It is somehow appropriate that the man whose 15 minutes of fame should have long since expired earned a B.S. because John Henry has churned out a lot of it: from public charges and court cases in the mid-1990’s, when he asserted that 80 percent of sports memorabilia bearing his father’s signature was fake; to a 1998 case involving his father’s stolen championship rings; to still another one in which he sued half-sister Claudia Williams for selling some autographed baseball bats Ted Williams had given her.

And now this cryonics case, the top of a big heap of court-related embarrassments.

Granted, many published reports have not depicted the Splendid Splinter as a candidate for father of the year, given his lack of involvement with his children when they were growing up, but one hopes this isn’t some long-reaching plan hatched by John Henry to pay his dad back for his absentee-style fatherhood. It’s understandable if he harbored resentment from not having his dad around, but that’s no excuse to sully his father’s memory to the degree it has been.

John Henry Williams and sister Claudia insist through their attorney that they are not trying to have their father frozen in a cryonics lab, as some have charged, to preserve his DNA for possible future sale. But given the younger Williams’ well-documented history of cashing in on his father’s fame, it’s not hard to imagine that as being a prime motivation for this court battle.

Whatever the reason, you have half-sister vs. half-brother, half-sister vs. half-sister, and numerous other factions involving Ted Williams’ family, friends, lawyers, and even the executor of his will locked in pitched legal battles. Even the devious and twisted minds behind the “Jerry Springer Show” would be hard-pressed to come up with stuff like this.

And the ultimate loser after all this nauseating behavior has long since subsided? Ted Williams’ memory.

No matter which version of John Henry you believe is the real one – the 33-year-old estranged son trying to re-connect with his father in a bid to salvage a father-son relationship in the father’s latter stages of life, or the manipulative opportunist who looked at his father simply as a meal ticket – the damage has already been done, and most of it by him.

A sign seen outside the courthouse where the Williams’ cremation case is being heard offered a poignant commentary on the whole sordid affair: “Free Ted. Freeze John Henry.”

But radio personality Rush Limbaugh put it best: If Ted Williams’ DNA does go on sale, let the buyer beware. Keep in mind that it’s the same DNA responsible for the creation of one John Henry Williams.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or ANeff@bangordailynews.net