It seems as though "Teddy Ballgame" had specific instructions for those dealing with his remains, none of which mentioned being cut into pieces, cryogenically frozen, and stored in Scottsdale.
In a letter to his lawyer, longtime Boston attorney and confidante Robert E. McWalter, baseball great Ted Williams asked to literally sleep with the fishes after his death.
"It is my wish that no funeral or memorial service of any kind be held and that my remains be cremated as soon as possible after my death. I want you to see that my ashes are sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida where the water is very deep," the letter, penned by "The Kid" himself, says.
The letter reemerged as part of McWalter's plea to have the "Splendid Splinter" freed from his frozen tomb at Alcor Life Extension's Scottsdale headquarters, where his frozen, detached head is reported to have been used by staffers as a baseball in recent months.
How Williams wound up frozen and in Scottsdale is a bit of a mystery. There is a piece of scrap paper signed by both Williams and his children, where the three agree on freezing the baseball legend after he died.
Not exactly a legally binding document, but it's dated 10 years after McWalter's letter, which was written in 1991 -- 11 years before the kid kicked the bucket.
McWalter says he plans to put his letter on display at a memorabilia shop in New England next to the piece of scrap paper that sentenced Williams to an eternity in a freezer in Scottsdale, and after seeing it, people can draw their own conclusions.
