Upon Further Review: Williams’ body fight bizarre
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All of Williams’ greatness may just be forgotten after his death this past week because of his kids’ fight over their father’s body.
In a bizarre dispute over his remains, Williams’ body was flown to Arizona by his son, John Henry Williams, who wants to preserve his father’s body so they can sell DNA from it at a future date.
The executor of Williams’ estate, Al Cassidy, will ask a judge to decide if the baseball great’s body should be cremated or frozen.
According to Williams’ oldest daughter, Ted wanted to be cremated. Sources close to Williams have also said that was his wish. But his son has other ideas.
Is it out of love to try and bring back his father at a later date? Or is this just another case of trying to make a buck off of someone else’s misfortune?
Williams’ body is supposed to be at Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona, a cryonics lab.
A cryonics lab is were a body is rushed immediately after death to minimize deterioration. The remains are chilled in dry ice to a temperature of about minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit and injected with chemicals that minimize the damage of the freezing process. Then the body is brought to a temperature of minus-320 degrees with liquid nitrogen and moved to a vacuum chamber for long-term storage.
There are about 90 humans and a few dozen pets in cryonic preservation, a process dating back to 1967. However, according to some scientists, freezing a body to minus-320 degrees is not the proper way to preserve DNA.
So this brings us back to an earlier question; is it for love, or for money? Either way it is still very strange. But if he is trying to sell the DNA it is not a very good way of going about it, according to scientists.
So maybe he just wants to try and bring back his father someday.
Or maybe the guy is just crazy.
Williams wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread over the Florida keys where he spent most of his time fishing. Regardless of how you may feel about this strange situation, his family should respect his wishes and do the right thing. It is a very sad day when a person, especially his son, wants to try and make a buck off his dad’s death. Sounds like this guy belongs on another planet.
•?Now on to something that is a little more down to earth.
But if you saw any of the home run contest Monday night and watched Sammy Sosa hit seven shots over 500 feet, you might think he was on another planet.
Jason Giambi may have won the contest with the most homers, but Sammy’s shots were a little more exciting to watch.
Giambi overcame Sosa’s awesome display of power in the Home Run Derby, beating Sosa 7-1 in the final round.
The long ball is what the fans want to see, and for a couple of hours Miller Park became the launching pad for some of the top power hitters in the game today.
It was fun to watch them all take their swings, but Sosa was the big hit of the night. Sosa’s 12 homers traveled 5,719 feet with his longest reaching a distance of 524 feet.
As the crowd started chanting “Sam-my! Sam-my!” I couldn’t help but join in as I sat in my easy chair at home and watch the display of power.
Things like that make baseball fun again.