It was a" plot worthy of a Stephen King novel", according to his half-sister. The sports columnists piled onto the alienated daughter's bandwagon charging that John Henry Williams had turned himself into a "horror movie star", which the family feud had turned a hero's life into a tragedy.

I followed the unfolding story with anxious anticipation. As the world's premier human cloning activist, I knew the media would soon be calling.

Now this was "serious stuff". It involved the right of an individual to act on personal belief and exercise a certain freedom of choice regarding burial. However, Alcor, the cryopreservation pioneers, had recently been roiled by an internal dispute about cloning. Those favoring saving tissue for cloning had been deposed after a bitter internal struggle.

I had had a warm and friendly relationship with Fred Chamberlain, the former President of Alcor. When Fred signed up at the Human Cloning Foundation, he indicated that both he and Alcor were happy to see the arrival of a human cloning movement.

Indeed, when a young man in California wanted to save his dying Mother's cells for possible future cloning, Fred arranged for that to be done. A physician collected the cells, with the Mother's consent as to what they might be used for in the future and sent them to Alcor for storage.

Subsequently, Fred Chamberlain left Alcor to establish a company called Cells4Life that promised to save "cells of pets for cloning" and" human cells for future therapeutic cloning." However, in their "ethical essay", it was obvious that the cells saved by someone could be used at a future date for any "legal" purpose. That could include reproductive cloning, assuming it had not been outlawed.

At this point, I contacted Fred Chamberlain at Cells4Life. I told him I wanted to store some of my cells for future cloning and to have them cultured and sent overseas for use by researchers trying to clone human embryos to create stem cell cultures.

Cells4Life had a modest fee structure. As I recall it was something like $750 or $1,000 for collecting and storing the cells, then about $100 annually for their maintenance. This was very much in line with charges made for storing the "cord blood" (blood from the umbilical cord of newborns), which could be used to restore the bone marrow should a child develop childhood leukemia

"We'll give you a special price." Fred Chamberlain assured me, saying he would get back to me regarding arrangements for collection. It felt good to know my promotional efforts on their behalf had not gone unappreciated.

Weeks passed and I heard nothing from Fred. The scientist contacted Cells4Life and told them exactly how to culture and deliver the cells overseas. When I got no response I began to wonder if they had been frightened off.

Cells4Life were very professional, responsible and conservative in their approach to this entire area. Off the record, I knew Fred was really in my corner, but once you ask someone to collect, cultivate and deliver cells to a fertility clinic for cloning, the rubber is really hitting the road in the real world. I could understand their slow and cautious response.

I had other options. I could simply fly to the fertility clinic and have fresh viable cells taken on the spot. Recent research had indicated that fresh cells were the best for such purposes anyway. I decided to keep waiting quietly.

When I finally called a few months later, the phone was disconnected. Their website was down for reconstruction. I found out through the folks at Alcor that Fred Chamberlain was no longer associated with them and that Cells4Life had failed for lack of financial backing.

What a tragedy. Now there was no place in the entire world where someone could have his or her cells saved for future therapeutic or reproductive cloning. Yes, there had been a "pet cloning clinic" on the west coast that had also helped save cells of the young man's mother.

In fact, those cells had proven viable as well as those saved by Alcor. But it had all been done "under cover" and "off the record". Who wants their next lifetime to be hanging by such a flimsy thread?

I called Alcor in June and asked if they planned on making simple storage of cells available. First I was told, in a rather frosty tone, that Fred Chamberlain was" no longer associated with Alcor". I smelled a palace coop. (Alcor officials would later acknowledge Fred's departure had not been amicable.)

Alcor was "considering" providing services to save human cells for possible cloning but, in the phone person's opinion, the odds were "two to one against our deciding to do so". This was depressing news indeed. I really felt a pang of angst for my good old friend; the recent corporately-departed pro-cloning Alcor President Fred Chamberlain!

It was Joe Henderson, a writer for Florida's Tampa Tribune, who really "captured" the story that the big names in journalism simply missed. Isn't it amazing how, even today, a little known local reporter with good instincts can scoop the national and international media!

Joe Henderson titled his story: "John Henry Williams Just Wanted To Please His Dad". It was one of those truly seminal pieces of writing that gripped any reader, a story that pierced the heavens of media distortion like the columns of light above Ground Zero.

"But you know something?" Henderson commenced. "Because this all is so bizarre now, one thing probably will be overlooked as John Henry becomes the target for every morning dee-jay looking for a cheap one-liner

"This is what must be remembered: John Henry Williams sincerely loved his father, cared for him and wanted to please him. There are many critics in Boston this morning who will disagree, but no one is grieving more now than John Henry Williams."

Joe Henderson went on to describe how John Henry Williams joined "a Boston Red Sox low-level minor-league team in Fort Myers" even though he lacked any baseball talent. He did so because "he wanted to try as a gift to his then-ailing father."

Many had made fun of this thirty-three year-old entering minor league baseball when most people were retiring and even professional major league players were counting their limited days.

Last Tuesday," Joe Henderson reported, "three days before his father died, I went to Fort Myers to talk with John Henry about this impossible dream."

Henderson noted that even with "free admission" there were only seven people in the stands. He observed that accusations that John Henry Williams was doing this as "a stunt" were seriously flawed.

John Henry Williams even confided that he had considered using an alias. Henderson concluded that "coming here to this lowest of the low baseball outposts and chasing a dream, a fantasy, or perhaps a delusion, was just an over-the-top try to please his father."

Joe Henderson described how Williams' only son, John Henry Williams hoped to "give Ted the gift of seeing him play in the uniform that mattered most to the Williams family." Fate would have it that John Henry would only play two games before fracturing a rib trying to catch a foul ball.

"The man who helped me care for dad told me that he's never seen Dad smile more than he has the last few weeks while this was going on," John Henry told Williams.

"Then he cried." Henderson recalled.

You knew that this was a real story. It just rang true.

Henderson described how Williams' son had a bumpy unsuccessful business career before returning to take care of his father some ten years ago. Even then tensions abounded in the family between Williams' three children from three different marriages. Once, John Henry had to take legal action to keep one of his half-sisters from selling 2,000 bats autographed by his father.

September 11th was a catalyst for John Henry Williams. For an entire year, the family had been waiting for Dad to die. John Henry Williams watched all the widows and orphans from 9/11 and realized how lucky he was to still have his father

That was why John Henry Williams, at age 33, got a spot on a team with kids half his age. Reporters noted that no one had been bumped and John Henry Williams would be the first to be dumped should a good prospect appear.

Williams's son did his best. He got up at precisely 4:06 every morning, got to the park before anyone else and stayed later than the others. Most importantly, he talked with his father three or four times a day for "updates, advice and encouragement".

It was 'father and son stuff" according to Pulitzer-deserving reporter Joe Henderson.

"I didn't start out doing this so I could play in the big leagues" Henderson says John Henry told him "I just wanted to hit in front of dad. To have him feel like maybe I could do this, that maybe I could go somewhere in the sport he loved."

It was truly a sad attempt of a loving son to please a dying father. A study of Olympic athletes years ago came to the surprising conclusion that relatives of extraordinarily gifted athletes only had "average motor skills and athletic ability". Athletic greatness is not something passed on to or shared with other members of the family.

"But if John Henry Williams doesn't play again, it wall still magic balm for Ted." Henderson noted. " Just a couple of days before he died, John Henry said, Ted sounded upbeat and strong on the other end of the phone. There was talk about getting him to a game.

"The talk is different now.

"'I gave him joy,' John Henry Williams told Henderson.

"Even if everything else is now so very strange," Joe Henderson concluded, "that ought to count for something."

Joe Henderson would be a truly singular knight in gleaming armor defending a grieving son from an ignorant vampirish media that smelled blood.

To make matters worst, the only person talking to the media was John Henry's half sister who considered cryopreservation "immoral" and "not what Dad would have wanted".

Most sport columnists and reporters were without pity, shameless in their moral crusade against the son who dreamed of giving his dad another chance at life. Today's moral consensus is that cremation and/or burial are fine. However, trying to preserve anyone through cryopreservation is sick, demented and immoral. To do this to Ted Williams was to insult the memory of a great man.

I personally don't understand why freezing a body is considered so hideous while burning it up and/or burying it in the ground is considered proper. I wouldn't choose to have my body put in a big tank of liquid nitrogen, upside down, with three other corpses and five heads, to be kept in pristine condition at minus 320 degrees. However, such a decision should be a matter of personal belief and individual choice.

The aggrieved sister told every reporter she could corner that her brother not only wanted to cryo-preserve their father, but she also alleged he planned to sell Ted's DNA. She claimed John Henry Williams once described to her a world fifty years in the future with "lots of little Ted Williams running around."

That was raw meat for the tabloid press.. However, reality really didn't jive with the story they were buying into.

Here are aspects most reporters missed or ignored:

Contrary to popular belief, no one "owns" his or her own DNA. You can't copyright it. You can't patent it. You can't sell it because that would be like selling human tissue or an organ, which is against the law. You can give your DNA away, just like you can donate a kidney. If someone cloned you against your will, you would have to sue them in an action of tort for having invaded your privacy and diminished it.

Furthermore, Alcor is a nonprofit charitable organization, which contracts with its "patients" to preserve their bodies until resuscitation is possible. Relatives, including John Henry Williams would not have any access to a patient's (his father's) DNA for the purposes of cloning.Ted Williams's body had legally been donated to Alcor under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.

Indeed, the current Alcor spokesmen made it quite plain that they "were simply interested in saving lives and had no interest whatsoever in cloning anyone". But the media wanted to feed. And feed it did. …

Mike Celizic, NBCsports.com contributor, was one of the most ferocious bottom-fish character assassins

Some excerpts from a column he titled "Chip off old block won't be new Splinter

"The guy's (John Henry Williams) got more loose screws than a hardware store. He's nuttier than a pistachio plantation…. He's a loony….

"John Henry Williams now wants to clone him? Why? So he can treat the baby Ted-clone the way the original treated him?….

After Farrey contacted me, I spent a couple hours re-reading a book titled Entwined Lives by Dr. Nancy Segal. This scholarly work was filled with fascinating documentation about how identical twins shared certain characteristics but could differ widely in others.

It just so happened that in the area of "athletic ability" identical twins were, generally speaking, very identical. Such similarity was not the case for other traits like creative ability.

Twin studies are "the next level" of the discussion and study of cloning. Being an activist, I have to keep ahead of the learning curve. Here are a few highlights I forwarded to ESPN and others covering this story…

Research shows: (according to Nancy Segal's book)

" Other dramatic suggestions of genetic influence upon athletic talents and choices also came from early reared apart identical twin studies. George and Millan each won boxing championships in his weight class before discovering that his twin existed."

We must look at the" concept of emergenesis to understand why identical twins more often join the ranks of decorated athletes in the same sport than do fraternal twins and siblings

"Recall that emergenesis describes unique traits associated with complex gene combinations, and odds are against the same gene assortment appearing in more than one family member.

On page 213, Segal writes:

"A modest but compelling laboratory analysis of twins' physical skills was an exception to the questionnaire format of early twin sports research. Reported in 1961 by Logan Wright, Professor of Psychology at Bethel College, the study compared the performances of a rare pair of reared apart ten-year-old identical twin boys with a pair of reared together nineteen-year-old identical twin women.

"This design tested the extent to which shared environments affected athletic skill development. Wright concluded,'It is amazing how much identical twins ten to be alike in some abilities only to be so different in others. Even when their backgrounds are radically different(as in the case of twins 'F' and 'L'), they were still more alike than was originally hypothized in some areas.'

"Twins in both pairs were extremely similar in reaction time, agility and coordination, suggesting genetic influence on these measures. However, the reared apart 'rural' twin outperformed his 'urban' brother in strength and endurance, possibly due to greater physical activity."

Dr.Segal then went on to examine the effect that similarities in Height, Body Mass Index, and Other body fat measures have in giving identical twins their special qualities.

Height example:

"Six-foot, ten-inch Horace Grant and his identical twin brother, six-foot, nine-inch Harvey, play basketball for the Washington Wizards and for the Orlando Magic, respectively. They have been described as 'among the country's most versatile and mobile big men.'"

Some other quick facts.".Tiki and Ronde Barbers are the ninth twin pair to play in the NFL.

"'If anyone beats me in the race, its okay if it's Jan.' A 1987 television documentary, Body Watch (WGBH, Boston), featured Canadian identical twins Jan Girard and Dian Girard-Rives, superb athletes in running, swimming and cycling."

"Nick and Pete Spanakos, the only identical twins winning boxing championships on the same night (Februrary 21,1955) in New York City, showed the same muscular contours on their five-foot, four-inch frames. 'And they both fought the same (way); busy, their hands always going. They were real crowd pleasers.'

"Identical twins David and Scott Hartle flaunted identical biceps at body-building camp, while preparing for the Teenage Mr. Western South Carolina and Mr. Olympia titles.

"Forty-one-year-old identical twins Angela and Chris Hearn placed first and second in New York City's 1987 'Museum Mile' run."

Such research indicates that a child conceived through the cloning of one of Ted Williams' cells would quite likely have his athletic abilities; I ventured in my letter to reporters.

"Whether that later-born twin would have the parenting skills to make his son take care of him through illness and go to extremes to make his final days more exciting is another matter entirely.

At least I could attempt to inject some facts and rationality, being a spoilsport at the media feast. Still, as a cloning activist and a non-sports-fan athletically impaired gay male, meeting Tom Farrey and the jock video team from ESPN filled me with trepidation.

Tom Farrey had seemed pleasant and intelligent during our conversations prior to the interview. I hardly expected the youthful tall and lean young man who bounded in the door. A bright smile, sparkling eyes and movie-star good looks now accompanied the voice I'd come to know only through the phone.

The producer had secured the use of a garden patio at Café Sha Sha, which was located next door to Clone Right United Front's headquarters in Manhattan's West Greenwich Village.

Tom Farrey asked a series of questions that enabled me to outline the arguments as to why a later-born twin of Ted Williams would most likely have the same great athletic ability.

I described my conversations earlier in the day with Alcor spokespeople and how that would make "the selling of Ted Williams's DNA" literally impossible even if John Henry Williams had ever intended to do so. I volunteered that such charges sounded like character assassination on the part of his estranged half-sister.

I had seen her on one newscast. She was stickly thin, with a black mole in the center of one cheek, offset with what appeared to be bleached blond hair. Her body language was stiff and awkward. Venom dripped from her every word. What her brother was doing was "something like the plot of a Stephen King novel". It was sick. It wasn't what her father wanted. Most of all, it was "immoral". And she intended to stop it. It was sibling rivalry in full regalia.

"Cryopreservation is not for me,: I assured Farrey. "I hate the cold. Being put upside down in a tank of liquid nitrogen and kept at minus 320 degrees would give me 'an ice cream headache for eternity'.

"I'd settle for freezing just a few cells. The rest of me they can cremate. However, I certainly thought John Henry Williams had the right to do what he believed best for his father even though I thought the prospects of future revival were virtually nil.

The conversation turned towards preserving the DNA of exceptional people. Tom Farrey commented that Tiger Woods seemed to be "without real competition" in the world of golf.

"Would we get another great golfer like Tiger Woods if we cloned him? "Tom Farrey prodded.

"Absolutely." I replied. "Unless the woman carrying the later-born twin had inadequate nutrition, a later-born twin would have the same ability as Tiger.

"Then Tiger would have something to worry about." Farrey theorized.

"You bet he would." I continued. " In fact, perhaps if the later-born twin had better nutrition in the womb, he might be even better than the original.."

"But how would people react to that?" Tom Farrey asked. "What would be the reaction of the fans?"

"Oh, they would love every minute of it," I replied. "There would be the old loyal Tiger One fans cheering on the aging golfer:' Go, Tiger go. Show that boy you're still number one!'

"Simultaneously, you'd have all these young fans cheering on the much younger Tiger Two chanting:' Go Tiger Two! Go! Show that old man you got the talent too!'

"The whole world would be watching. Everyone would be fascinated. Ratings would go through the roof. It would be the golf tournament of the Century. The fans would love it. It would just be fabulous."

Farrey and I had broken new ground in a way. I'd always talked of the closeness and compatibility between a later-born twin and his or her older sibling. The concept had never been framed in terms of competition.

I confided to Farrey as we returned to cloning headquarters after the interview that he "had broken new ground" with the tiger Woods questions. The cameraman and sound technician quickly chimed in that they thought that was the highlight of the interview.

Of course, people doing even short documentaries or news stories film you for a couple hours and use you for only a couple minutes. I knew, as always, a lot of good material would end up on the cutting room floor.

Newsmen know when they are dealing with an experienced subject. I joked that an anti-cloning editor could take what I said and make me look as foolish as he wished. I also wondered aloud as to whether I would be heard for "thirty or forty-five seconds" in their report. We all laughed together knowingly.

The crew had packed their gear and was ready to head off to Princeton to interview Dr. Lee Silver. I checked my email and couldn't resist sharing part of the message a scientist working overseas on stem cell research and reproductive cloning had sent.

With electrical tape covering the return address and the Doctor's name, I tortured them with parts of the message. It read:

"That is great news Randy. If John Henry agrees, then I will give him the mailing address of Dr. Xxxxx Xxxxxx's clinic where he can mail Ted's frozen skin tissue samples. John will have to talk to Alcor about what he wants to do with his frozen dad. If John wants to re-create his dad, then HUMAN CLONING is the ONLY way to go.

"Reviving a frozen human being is NOT possible and may be biologically impossible, even in distant future,because of damage which freezing procedure does to whole organs. Freezing small tissues is NOT a problem. Freezing whole body or whole organs is. You NEED to convince John Williams about this. I think Alcor is taking people for a ride that they can revive frozen people in future. Damage that freezing causes to whole body is believed to be irreversible."

It was exciting enough to get the soundman to unpack his mike so I could read the opening lines for ESPN.