When it comes to baseball, I am a purist. I love to see hard-nosed baseball, the kind Pete Rose used to play and Ty Cobb before him. The kind of baseball where you leave absolutely everything you have on the field. I love to see stolen bases and sacrifice flies that manufacture runs, pitchers’ duels and safety squeezes. It’s the strategy and the matchups that I love. One manager trying to outthink the other and players who know the scouting report on every other pitcher or hitter they have to face-true students of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to see home runs too, but many games today become home run derbies, not baseball games. Rose and Cobb may not have been great men off the field, but when it comes to playing baseball, there were few better and none who played the game harder.

Ted Williams was another who always gave it everything he had. Teddy Ballgame could do it all. He had power and speed, but never hesitated to slap one the other way to drive in runs. He was a darn good outfielder too, and his .406 batting average in 1941 will stand as the target for hitters like Bonds and A-Rod for years to come.

Teddy Ballgame’s love of the game and his charisma and class both on and off the field are precisely why I am so disturbed about all the controversy that has surrounded him since his death. A legend such as Ted Williams, one of the greatest ever to play the game, deserves so much more.

It began with Major League Baseball deciding to honor Williams by naming the All-Star game MVP award after him, only to have the game end in a tie, resulting in a lot of disappointed fans and no award given out . Not exactly the tribute Major League Baseball had in mind.

From there though things went from strange to nauseating. Williams’ son decided to fly his dad’s body to Arizona and have Teddy Ballgame placed on his head and frozen at 320 degrees below zero. That was followed quickly by a lawsuit from Williams’ daughter for custody of the body so Williams could be cremated and the ashes spread over the Florida Keys, as she claims it says in Williams’ will. The whole fiasco is like a bad science fiction movie.

I thought about Williams as I was flipping through TV stations and came across this horrible movie on the Independent Film Channel called “Re-animator.” In the movie, a young medical student developed a serum that when injected into corpses in the morgue would bring them back to life. Something went wrong though, and the now undead corpses became blood drooling zombies attacking everyone in sight. I keep waiting for the report about something going wrong down in Arizona and Williams coming back to life and turning on those for whom he has become an icon.

No one really knows what John Henry Williams’ intentions are, but even if they don’t involve bringing his father back to life, it sickens me to think that he may want to simply make a quick buck off of his late father by selling the DNA. It really shouldn’t surprise me though. John Henry is the same guy who in the past has tried to sell every piece of his father’s memorabilia he could get his hands on.

It’s a shame that such a tremendous human being has been shown such little respect by his own family. Williams can now safely join Rodney Dangerfield in his claims of “I get no respect.”

The latest installment came Monday when the Red Sox decided to honor their greatest player with two tributes at Fenway Park. Not a single member of Williams’ family decided to show up, even though the Red Sox had invited them. I can certainly understand the family wanting to keep a low profile and avoid the press. After all, there are thousands of reporters and columnists just like me all over the country chomping at the bit to know just exactly what the hell is going on, but suck it in for one day and just tell the press “Today is about my father and his tribute, I won’t comment on the court case.” Why add insult to injury by not even showing up at your father’s tribute and disgracing his memory even more?

Ted, if you’re up there somewhere looking down, don’t worry. There are still many of us down here that remember you for the great person and ballplayer you were, in spite of the shenanigans of your son.

If John Henry thinks he is doing the world a favor by keeping Teddy Ballgame around, maybe he should really do the world a favor and donate his own body to science, then at least his life wouldn’t have been a complete waste.

Mike Nichols is a senior in political science from Lincoln, Neb.