Author Bernard Malamud, who was not a baseball fan himself, took the basic elements of the Waitkus story and wove them along with various baseball legends (notably Joe Jackson) into a novel, a morality tale called The Natural.
Ruth Ann Steinhagen (December 23, 1929 – December 29, 2012) 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 instances of what later became known as stalker crimes.
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On June 14, 1949, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus was shot and nearly killed by an obsessive fan at the hotel, 19-year-old Ruth Steinhagen; this later would be a large part of the inspiration behind Bernard Malamud's novel The Natural.