text: Chicago woman was real-life stalker from 'The Natural' 
   
   Ruth Ann Steinhagen, the Chicago woman who shot an ex-Cubs player in 1949 and inspired 'The Natural' story, dies at 83 
   
   The 19-year-old's crime, which put a spotlight on stalking crimes, nearly killed Waitkus, 29, and temporarily sidetracked his career. The incident also helped to draw attention to "baseball Annies" — young, hero-worshipping groupies who would pursue major league ballplayers, often relentlessly. 
   
   The Chicago woman whose near-fatal 1949 shooting of former Cubs first baseman Eddie Waitkus inspired the book and movie "The Natural" died with the same anonymity with which she lived for more than half a century. 
   
   Ruth Steinhagen "mops" the floor of a cell in Cook County Jail, where she is being held in the shooting of baseball star Eddie Waitkus. The photo is staged for news cameras, because the mop and floor are dry. (Chicago Tribune) 
   
   However, from the time that Ruth Ann Steinhagen left Kankakee State Hospital in 1952 after undergoing nearly three years of psychiatric treatment, she disappeared into near obscurity — so much so that one of her final next-door neighbors said he lived there for more than 15 years before learning her history. 
   
   Steinhagen, who never spoke publicly about the Waitkus incident after her release from the hospital, spent much of her final 42 years living in a modest house on the Northwest Side with her parents and sister. 
   
   She died Dec. 29 at Swedish Covenant Hospital of a subdural hematoma caused by an accidental fall in her longtime home, a Cook County medical examiner spokeswoman said. She was 83. 
   
   Her death had gone unreported and was only discovered when the Tribune was searching death records for another story. 
   
   "She was never social," next-door neighbor Chris Gentner said. "I talked to her and we knew each other, but she really wasn't the type of person who would sit down and talk to you." 
   
   Gentner said it was only recently that he learned of Steinhagen's notorious past. 
   
   "I was amazed. I then looked her up and saw all that stuff. Interestingly, where I grew up in New York was real close to where they made parts of 'The Natural.'" 
   
   Born Ruth Catherine Steinhagen in Cicero on Dec. 23, 1929, Steinhagen was the daughter of die-setter Walter Steinhagen and his homemaker wife, Edith, both of whom had emigrated from Berlin in their early 20s, according to Chicago author John Theodore's 2002 Waitkus biography, "Baseball's Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus." She spent two years at Waller High School before earning a diploma from Jones Commercial High School, now Jones College Prep. 
   
   At some point in her teens, Steinhagen, who had begun using the middle name Ann, became obsessed with Waitkus, who then was a first baseman for the Cubs. After the Cubs traded Waitkus to the Phillies before the 1949 season, Steinhagen's obsession with him intensified. 
   
   "Ruth has a place in Chicago crime history because of the good old-fashioned moxie she used to carry out her plan — to kill Eddie Waitkus," Theodore said via email Thursday. "Here's a 19-year-old girl, living by herself in a tiny apartment on Lincoln Avenue, in 1949. She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he's from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. ... He's Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs." 
   
   It all came to a head June 14, 1949, when the Phillies were in town to play the Cubs. Steinhagen, then a typist for the Continental Casualty insurance company in the Loop, attended the game that day. After the game, she sent Waitkus an unsigned note summoning him to a 12th-floor room in the now-demolished Edgewater Beach Hotel, where the Phillies were staying. When Waitkus arrived at 11:30 p.m., Steinhagen told Waitkus from behind the door, "I have a surprise for you," and then used a .22-caliber rifle that she had purchased at a pawnshop to shoot him just below the heart. ||||| She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she'd never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him. 
   
   FILE - In this June 18, 1949 file photo, Ruth Steinhagen, 19, held in the shooting of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus at a Chicago hotel on June 14, 1949, writes notes for her life history... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this Feb. 27, 1950 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus, right, shows scars resulting from an operation following his shooting in Chicago in 1949, to his roommate, outfielder... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this June 17, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus smiles from his bed in Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago as his father, Stephen, holds up his arm for an attempted... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this Aug. 19, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus acknowledges the applause of fans at Shibe Park as he stands by gifts showered on him on "Eddie Waitkus Night"... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this June 16, 1949 file photo, Ruth Steinhagen, 19, is seen at felony court in Chicago where she appeared for her hearing on charges of assault with intent to murder in the shooting of Philadelphia... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this June 30, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus sits in a wheelchair in felony court in Court during a hearing for Ruth Steinhagen, left, who is alleged to have... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this June 21, 1949 file photo, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus, with help from nurses at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago, takes his first steps since he was shot June... (Associated Press) 
   
   After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier. 
   
   The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Friday that Steinhagen passed away of natural causes on Dec. 29, at the age of 83. First reported by the Chicago Tribune last week, her identity was a surprise even to the morgue employees who knew about the 1984 movie "The Natural," in which she was portrayed by actress Barbara Hershey. 
   
   "She chose to live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," John Theodore, an author who wrote a 2002 nonfiction book about the crime, wrote in an email Sunday. 
   
   The story, with its elements of obsession, mystery, insanity and a baseball star, made it part of both Chicago's colorful crime history and rich baseball lore. 
   
   The story began with what appeared to be just another young woman's crush on Eddie Waitkus, the Chicago Cubs' handsome first baseman. So complete was this crush that the teenager set a place for Waitkus, whom she'd never met, at the family dinner table. She turned her bedroom into a shrine to him, and put his photo under her pillow. 
   
   After the 1948 season, Waitkus was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies _ a fateful turn. "When he went to the Phillies, that's when she decided to kill him," Theodore said in an interview. 
   
   Steinhagen had her chance the next season, when the Phillies came to Chicago to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. She checked into a room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel where he was staying and invited him to her room. 
   
   "We're not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about," she wrote in a note to him after a game at Wrigley on June 14, 1949. 
   
   It worked. Waitkus arrived at her room. After he sat down, Steinhagen walked to a closet, said, "I have a surprise for you," then turned with the rifle she had hidden there and shot him in the chest. Theodore wrote that she then knelt by his side and held his hand on her lap. She told a psychiatrist afterward about how she had dreamed of killing him and found it strange that she was now "holding him in my arms." 
   
   Newspapers devoured and trumpeted the lurid story of a 19-year-old baseball groupie, known in the parlance of the day as a "Baseball Annie." Among the sensational and probably staged photos was one showing Steinhagen writing in her journal at a table in her jail cell with a framed photograph of Waitkus propped nearby. 
   
   A judge determined she was insane and committed her to a mental hospital. She was released three years later, after doctors determined she had regained her sanity. 
   
   Details about the rest of her life are sketchy. She lived with her sister in a house just a few miles from the hotel where she shot Waitkus. A neighbor told Theodore that Steinhagen said she worked in an office for 35 years but never revealed her employer. And she made an effort to conceal her privacy, often refusing to answer the phone or come to the door when Theodore knocked. 
   
   Chris Gentner, a neighbor who used to help the Steinhagen sisters with chores, said he only found out who she was 15 years after they began living nearby. 
   
   "I found out through my ex-wife _ I'm not sure how she found out _ and I looked (Steinhagen) up online. And as soon as I saw (her photograph) online I said, `That's her,'" Gentner said. 
   
   The 1984 movie was based on a novel by Bernard Malamud that was inspired by the story. Theodore's 2002 book was entitled "Baseball's Natural: The story of Eddie Waitkus." 
   
   Waitkus, who played the season after he was shot, helping the Phillies win the National League pennant, decided not to press charges in 1952 when Steinhagen was deemed sane. The trial would have likely made banner headlines _ particularly since Malamud's novel was released in 1952 _ so Watikus' decision almost certainly assisted Steinhagen's disappearance into obscurity. 
   
   He died in 1972, 12 years before Redford portrayed Roy Hobbs, the character inspired by Waitkus. 
   
   "He hardly ever talked to his family about Ruth," Theodore said.
target: – An obsessed baseball fan's near-fatal attack on her idol became a movie—but the fan herself quietly died three months ago. Ruth Ann Steinhagen, whose story inspired the Robert Redford movie The Natural, was 83 when she died Dec. 29 of a subdural hematoma that arose after a fall in her home, reports the Chicago Tribune. The paper talks to the biographer of the Philadelphia Phillies' Eddie Waitkus, who explains the depth of her obsession: "She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he's from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. ... He's Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs." In 1949, at age 19, she was in a Chicago hotel where Waitkus was staying. She managed to slip him a note telling him she had "something of importance to speak to you about," and he visited her room. When he sat down, she told him she had a surprise for him; she took a rifle from the closet and shot him in the chest, then held his hand, the AP reports. She was ruled insane and spent three years in a psychiatric hospital. Following her release, she worked in an office and lived with her sister. Even workers at the morgue didn't at first realize who she was, the AP notes. "She chose to live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," says a baseball historian. Waitkus, on the other hand, kept on playing—and the Phillies won the pennant that year. The Tribune, which first reported her death, notes that it accidentally stumbled upon her death record while researching another story.