The Cold War

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. —  Here lies baseball’s greatest hitter, finally thrown a curve he couldn’t reach.

Here lies a summer hero, frozen solid.

Here in this gray cinder-block building, on this scrub brush of a street in an airport industrial park, a marble company on his right, an adjustable bed factory on his left.

Outside it is 110 degrees. Inside, suspended upside down in a stainless steel tank filled with liquid nitrogen, a legend cools.

Tough, brave, yet not strong enough to avoid being torn apart by his family.

Here lies Ted Williams.

The Splendid Popsicle.

*

It is All-Star day, so you have come to this desert neighborhood to pay homage to baseball’s ultimate All-Star.

You remember a couple of years ago, when Ted Williams made his final All-Star game appearance, on a golf cart at Fenway Park, in a ceremony that moved modern-day players to tears?

This was a hot-blooded human being who touched people. This was not an ice sculpture.

Yet here he is, at Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonic suspension facility that has parts of about 50 frozen corpses they optimistically call “patients.”

Williams arrived here last weekend, shortly after his death at 83.

His son, John Henry Williams, sent him, reportedly hoping to squeeze even more money out of his name, or at least his DNA.

His daughter Bobby-Jo Ferrell, is legally protesting, claiming her father wanted to be cremated, his ashes spread over his beloved Florida Keys.

This messy, spooky affair is as ill-befitting Ted Williams as a ninth-inning strikeout.

Remember how he ended his baseball career with a home run?

Remember how he refused to sit down on the final day of the 1941 season, even though it put his .400 batting average in jeopardy?

This was a man who understood exits.

Is hanging in frozen limbo in the middle of a desert warehouse considered an exit?

You approach the front door, marked Alcor Marketing and Resource Center, sturdy and gray between two tinted windows.

This could be a cellular-phone store or rug warehouse, until a security guard leaps from his folding chair and blocks your way.

An identification card is passed. The door opens a crack. Another guard reaches outside and takes the card. There is much whispering.

You called ahead, you say. You just need a minute for some quick questions, you promise.

The card is returned. The door slams shut.

They are too busy. They will call you later.

Which, of course, they won’t.

“The whole thing is bizarre,” says Ron Johnson, owner of a sewing workroom two doors down. “That door is locked all the time. You never see anybody. It’s odd. It’s not normal. I feel so bad for Ted and what the jerk kid is putting him through.”

Neighbors who have toured the facility say that it is essentially a warehouse filled with giant steel containers around what appears to be a surgical unit.

“I think that’s for the heads,” says Brad Porter, president of the air-conditioning company at the other end of the building.

Porter’s outfit, Air Conditioning By Jay Inc., knows all about the heads.

Employees there helped construct racks that hold the severed heads of those who want to freeze only their brains.

They also helped build some of those containers, which are essentially tombs.

“Yeah, it’s kind of creepy, I know,” says Porter.

The air-conditioning company’s phone number is 92-CHILL.

“That should be Alcor’s number,” employee Sally Kling says.

Neighbors say it’s just as creepy outside, where an ambulance drives up at all hours to a back door that warns of hazardous materials.

Out front, a wide-eyed Alcor employee rides around the building on a creaking bicycle.

During calmer times, the windows are not tinted, and neighbors are treated to a window display of one of the giant tombs.

“Every time somebody new works here, they are taken past that window to get their reaction,” Kling says. “When they took me, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ ”

Ted Williams, one of our most honored athletes, has been consigned to a sideshow.

“He’s in there with all the other stiffs, and I mean stiffs,” Kling says.

Ted Williams, the guy who used to tell the jokes, is in the middle of a bad one.

“We tell people, ‘Why go over there and get frozen when you can come here and get turned into beautiful stone?’ ” says Beverly Durigon of Travertine International, the marble company next door.

Ted Williams has gone from the baseball family to ...

“The Addams Family,” says another business neighbor, and on a steamy All-Star afternoon, the whole room howls.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected].