The Natural
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The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball by Bernard Malamud, and is his debut novel. The story follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked after he is shot by a woman whose mot
Cover page of The Natural (first edition)
A signed first edition copy of The Natural held by Oregon State University, which employed Malamud.
Ruth Ann Steinhagen
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Ruth Ann Steinhagen was an American woman who shot and nearly killed Eddie Waitkus, star first baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies, on June 14, 1949, in one of the first recorded instances of what la
The Natural
…en route to Chicago at the beginning of the novel. She later shoots him in her hotel room before committing suicide. Her character is loosely based on Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a disturbed 19-year-old baseball fan who, obsessed with Eddie Waitkus, shot and nearly killed him in 1949. Harry Sylvester (August 26, 1952). "With…
Ruth Ann Steinhagen
Image of Eddie Waitkus from a 1951 baseball card
Circa 1941 postcard of the Edgewater Beach Hotel