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. 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. She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. After the Cubs traded Waitkus to the Phillies before the 1949 season, Steinhagen's obsession with him intensified. Steinhagen had her chance the next season, when the Phillies came to Chicago to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. 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. 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. (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. "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. 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."
– 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.