No Chilling Out for Williams Family

Long gone are the days when Boston area sports memorabilia dealer Phil Castinetti flew with John Henry Williams and associate Brian Interland to Florida to do signings with the late great Ted Williams. It was a decade or so ago and John Henry had just jumped into managing his father's memorabilia affairs. Castinetti remembers looking across the aisle and saw John Henry "fooling around," signing his father's name on sheets of paper. "They were fooling around and just did it once each, and they were perfect," Castinetti said. "They said to me, 'Look at this. We were all friendly at the time, and they both did Ted as good as Ted could do."

Ten years later, Castinetti said customers are coming into his shop asking about Ted Williams autographs under the family's Green Diamond Enterprises certificate. One would assume that the Splendid Splinter signed everything John Henry and his aides put under his nose. However, the surfacing of a signed scrap of paper indicating the slugger's wish to have his body preserved cryonically has raised questions about anything signed by Williams during at least the past two years. The note in question, purportedly found in the trunk of a car and tainted with oil stains, expresses a desire to be frozen. The wish is crudely printed on a small piece of paper and also signed by John Henry, Claudia and their father. At issue, under Florida law, is whether this written note is a last wish that supercedes Williams' 1996 will. The authenticity of the signature has been called into question. The slip of paper was allegedly signed in 2000 after Williams suffered the last of his three strokes. When a customer of Castinetti's saw the published note, he recalled a Ted Williams signature from a thank you letter to Mike Andrews, chairman of the Jimmy Fund. The T in Ted was instantly recognizeable, but other letters featured a shaky and uneven quality that reflected the effects of the stroke.

Could Williams have regained powers in subsequent months to sign his name with the familiar flair of the past?

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