Book: Ted Williams' Frozen Head Used For Batting Practice

Ted Williams has had a rough afterlife.

First his kids fought over whether his remains should be frozen like a Popsicle for eternity or until they found a cure for all diseases -- whichever came first. Williams, baseball's last .400 hitter, was reduced to a punch line for late-night TV comics. Now, the memory of one of game's greatest hitters is tarnished again.

After he died in 2002, Williams' body was sent to an Arizona cryogenics facility called the Alcor Life Extension Foundation at the direction of his son John Henry Williams. The New York Daily News is reporting that a soon-to-be published book, "Frozen," written by Larry Johnson, a former exec at Alcor in Scottsdale, Arizona, describes how the Boston Red Sox' star was beheaded, his head frozen and repeatedly abused.

In 2003, the elder Williams' friend, Buzz Hamon, sneaked into Alcor with the help of a mortician friend and was appalled to find the slugger's body stored with 50 others alongside cardboard boxes and junk, the newspaper said. Hamon later committed suicide.

The unconscionable way Williams was treated -- an Alcor employee removed Williams' head from the freezer with a stick, and tried to dislodge the tuna can it was balanced on by swinging at it with a monkey wrench -- is just one of the many odd stories detailed in the book by Johnson. He details experiments in which live dogs were mutilated and what he says were suspicious deaths of some of the people held in icy tombs at the facility. I am sure law enforcement officials in Arizona will take note. Johnson is currently in hiding. An Alcor spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

Unfortunately, John Henry Williams isn't around to answer for the horrendous way his father has been treated having died of leukemia a few years ago. His body also is at Alcor, which denies on its Web site that its technology can be used to revive "the truly brain dead." It's explanation of cryogenics raises more even more questions.

"Cryonics is a speculative life support technology that seeks to preserve human life in a state that will be viable and treatable by future medicine," the company Web site says. "It is expected that future medicine will include mature nanotechnology, and the ability to heal at the cellular and molecular levels."