Last week rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall scored his first NFL touchdown just months after suffering a gunshot wound to his chest during a botched robbery attempt. The story reminded me of another sports figure who ironically is buried a few rows from yesterday’s feature, Jeff Burton.
Eddie Waitkus was an All-Star MLB first baseman who played a total of 11 seasons with the Cubs, Phillies, and Orioles. Like many players of his era, his career was interrupted by World War II. Waitkus served with the Army in the Pacific theatre and was exposed to some of the most brutal fighting of the war. He was awarded an impressive four Bronze Stars, including one for saving the life of a fellow soldier. While taking enemy fire Waitkus left the safety of his foxhole to obtain safety pins, which he used to staunch the bleeding.
Waitkus survived the war and returned to baseball. In 1949 while staying at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, Waitkus was shot in the chest by obsessed female fan, Ruth Steinhagen. Waitkus would miraculously survive, but his playing career and personal life were severely impacted.
The shooting of Eddie Waitkus is considered one of the earliest recognized cases of criminal stalking in the United States. Steinhagen was confined to a hospital and released in 1952. Waitkus never pressed charges, choosing to move on from the incident entirely. Secretly he developed a drinking problem and died in 1972 of esophageal cancer at the age of 53. Steinhagen chose to live the remainder of her life in obscurity, refusing to speak of the incident up until her death in 2012 at the age of 83. Together, their story would be a major source of inspiration for the 1952 Barnard Malamud novel “The Natural,” which was later made into the well-known 1984 movie starring Robert Redford.
#atrestoration #baseball #sports #truecrime #eddiewaitkus #thenatural
