X-Message-Number: 19519
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:50:46 +1000
From: Damien Broderick <>
Subject: Williams

One truly extraordinary feature of this beat-up outrage over the `ghoulish'
procedure is that you invariably read about two terrible aspects of the
affair. From the Guardian:

>At a time when mediocre modern ball players were
>making millions, one of the best ever was relatively
>poor. Williams Jr set out redress this seeming
>injustice. He did it by exploiting American sports
>fans' insatiable appetite for memorabilia. After
>Babe Ruth, there was no bigger name in baseball
>than Ted Williams; his autographed baseballs go for
>$475, signed photographs for $400. 
>
>'Sign, sign, sign. They would do it for hours at a
>time until the man was so tired he couldn't write
>any more,' recalls Kay Munday, who managed the
>Williams household from 1989 to 1995. 'John
>pushed and pushed his dad to do all this stuff, and
>of course it was all for money. The ultimate thing
>was the money.'

This is followed by a completely different opportunity for shocked
finger-wagging:

>The US market in hope isn't quite as buoyant as
>the market in Ted Williams' autographs these days
>but at $40,000 a head (or $120,000 if you want the
>whole body frozen)

So Williams *fils* is ruthlessly greedy for money--so greedy that he's
cunningly throwing away many tens of thousands of dollars.

I dunno. Apparently most media people's brains have just... frozen up.

Damien Broderick

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