Sunday 17 March 2013

Obsessed fan who shot US ballplayer dies

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 half a century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed on Friday that Steinhagen passed away of natural causes on December 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 non-fiction book about the crime, wrote in an email on Sunday.
The story, with its elements of obsession, mystery, insanity and a baseball star, made it part of both Chicago's colourful 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.
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.

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