Ted Williams' mystery signature?

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, seeing John Henry 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 is no longer friendly with John Henry Williams, and that's an understatement. And that's another story, but Castinetti said customers are coming into his shop asking about Ted Williams autographs under the family's Green Diamond certificate.

One can safely assume that the Splendid Splinter signed everything John Henry and his father's 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 Williams' BMW and tainted with oil stains, expresses Ted's desire to be cryonically preserved. The wish is crudely printed on a small piece of paper and also signed by John Henry, sister Claudia and their father. The authenticity of the signature has been called into question. The slip of paper was allegedly signed in 2000 after he suffered the last of his three strokes. A Castinetti customer, seeing news about the note evidently found it strange that the signature attributed to Williams was so well-formed. The customer said the signature from a thank you letter from Williams to Mike Andrews, chairman of the Jimmy Fund, Ted's favorite charity, showed the effects of the stroke. The "T" in Ted was instantly recognizeable, but other letters featured a shaky and uneven quality that would be expected from a stroke victim.

Could Williams have regained powers six months later to sign his name with the familiar flair of the past? Autograph collectors have grown accustomed to dealing with evolving signatures, including post-illness signatures, notably by Buck Leonard and Roy Campanella. They have very credible doubts. Another dealer who worked with the Williams family described the signature as "esoteric, to say the least. It's not impossible, but it defies the obvious." The difference concerning the two signatures calls into question not only the signature on the slip of paper that was curiously buried in the trunk of an automobile. but the validity of at least some items distributed by Green Diamond. Castinetti said at least a few of his customers are concerned. Calls into John Henry Williams at Green Diamond have gone unanswered.