Eddie Waitkus was a good baseball player. Born in 1919 of immigrant Lithuanian parents, he made his major league debut in 1941 with the Chicago Cubs manning first base. With the onset of WWII, Waitkus served in the US Army in the Philippines, earning four Bronze Stars.
After the war, Waitkus returned to the Cubs. In 1946 he was a solid player hitting a respectable .302. That first season back he was popular with the media and the fans. Sixteen year-old Chicago area native Ruth Steinhagen was particularly enamored of Waitkus. She frequently attended Cubs games and Waitkus was all she could talk about to family and friends. Her obsession did not abate after Eddie was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1948 season.
While Steinhagen never met the baseball player, she collected hundreds of pictures and newspaper clippings; anything she could find about her favorite player. Ruth learned Waitkus was of Lithuanian decent, so she attempted to learn Lithuanian. She occasionally set an empty place for Waitkus at the dinner table.
In June 1949 the Phillies came to town for a series against the Cubs. As usual, the team checked into the Edgewater Beach Hotel on Chicago's North Side. Steinhagen booked a room for three days at the hotel. Ruth attended the game on June 14 and watched the Phillies defeat the Cubs 9-2. Eddie Waitkus had one hit in the victory.
Later that night, Steinhagen gave a bellhop $5 and a note for Eddie Waitkus, stating she needed to talk to him on "something of importance." Eddie Waitkus had no idea who Ruth Steinhagen was. Curious, he went to her room.
"For two years you have been bothering me," she said, and Steinhagen shot the baseball player in the chest with a .22 rifle. Then Steinhagen calmly sat down and called the front desk to report the shooting.
The bullet missed the heart, but it took several surgeries to remove the bullet from Waitkus' lung. He survived horrific fighting in the Pacific only to be shot by an obsessed fan. Remarkably, Eddie Waitkus recovered and returned to the Phillies for the 1949 season, playing first base and hitting lead off. Waitkus played through the 1955 season. He died of esophageal cancer at age 53 in 1972.
Eddie Waitkus did not press charges against Ruth Steinhagen, but a criminal court ruled her insane and ordered her to the Kankakee State Hospital for treatment. She remained for three years. After she was released, Ruth moved in with her sister and parents and lived a secluded life, shunning the press and publicity. Little is know of the rest of her life. She died on December 29, 2012 after a fall. She was 83.
The Waitkus shooting is held to be the inspiration of Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel, The Natural and the 1984 Film starring Robert Redford, based on the book.
