A real-life baseball incident was adapted in The Natural.
The Natural, based on a 1952 book, was released in 1984. In the film, Harriett Bird (Barbara Hershey) calls Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) to her hotel room in the film. The scene is based on an actual event.
Eddie Waitkus (photo courtesy SABR.org)
Ruth Ann Steinhagen (photo courtesy Sydney Morning Herald)
At 19, Ruth Ann Steinhagan became obsessed with Eddie Waitkus after seeing him play as a first baseman with the Chicago Cubs. She had never met him, but she created a shrine with hundreds of photos and newspaper clippings of Waitkus, spreading them out and looking at them for hours. At dinner time, she would set an empty place for Waitkus. Eddie Waitkus was from Boston, and Ruth Ann craved baked beans.
In the summer of 1949, the Phillies came to Chicago to face the Cubs, and Waitkus played well in that game. Ruth Ann attended the game and wrote a letter to Waitkus. She invited him to visit her in her 12th-floor room in the Edgewater Beach Hotel, where they were both registered, and her note to him said that it was essential that he see her.
Once Waitkus entered the room. Ruth Ann was standing there with a gun and shot him in the chest.
After the incident, she told her doctors, “I used to go to all the ball games to watch him. We used to wait for them to come out of the clubhouse after the game, and all the time I was watching, I was building in my mind that idea of killing him.” Local police found clippings in her suitcase and pictures of him papering on her bedroom ceiling.
The good news is that the bullet didn’t kill Eddie Waitkus. The following year, he played baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies, and the team advanced to the World Series. Waitkus played through the 1955 season.
