Remind me not to be cryogenically frozen — not after what happened to Ted Williams

I guess it’s not all like Futurama. When baseball legend Ted Williams died in 2002, his family had him frozen. Later, his head was severed and just the head was preserved.

I’ve heard of cryogenics before, but I’m skeptical. Unless you can somehow solve the problem of water expanding when it freezes, then any so-called “preservation” would instead have brain cells bursting apart like a beer bottle in the freezer.

But even that would be better than the indignity that one former crygenics employee says happened to Williams. From an article in the New York Daily News:

Shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors’ last .400 hitter.

Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can ….

The technician, no .406 hitter like the baseball legend, missed the can with several swings of the wrench and smacked Williams’ head directly, spraying “tiny pieces of frozen head” around the room.

I’m not sure that I could say I’m eager to read the book — the author wore a wire for three months at the crygenics company and stole photos and internal documentation ot back up his claims — but I’m sure glad that it’s coming out.

Maybe — maybe! — in the far future, the technology will exist to thaw out these frozen heads and bodies. And maybe — maybe! — our descendants will even want to do this for us, and will do so out of the goodness of their hearts.

But I kind of doubt it.