The trading — and then shooting — of Eddie Waitkus

Eddie Waitkus with the Chicago Cubs

Today seems like an innocent enough date in 1948 as the Chicago Cubs trade first baseman Eddie Waitkus and pitcher Hank Borowy to the Philadelphia Phillies for pitchers Dutch Leonard and Monk Dubiel.

The story, though, soon gets weird, really weird, as a deranged Cubs fan named Ruth Ann Steinhagen, already obsessing with all things Waitkus and despondent over the trade, begins plotting to kill Philadelphia’s new first baseman when the Phillies visit Wrigley Field in 1949.

She tries to do just that on June 14, 1949.

After watching Waitkus play that afternoon at Wrigley Field, Steinhagen, with rifle in hand, shoots Waitkus in the chest in her room at Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel.

Ruth Ann Steinhagen

Steinhagen then notifies the front desk to say she shot Waitkus, a call that ironically saves Waitkus from bleeding to death.

Waitkus, who is hitting a team-high .306 at the time, misses the rest of the 1949 season with Philadelphia before returning in 1950 to play in all 154 of the Phillies’ regular season games on their way to the World Series.

Since Waitkus refuses to press charges, Steinhagen faces trial for attempted murder.

Instead, Steinhagen spends three years in a mental hospital before being pronounced “cured” and released.

Waitkus plays with the Phillies through 1953 and spends the next season-plus in Baltimore before returning to Philadelphia midway through the 1955 season – his last in the majors.

Waitkus’ story becomes, in part, an inspiration for Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel The Natural, which Robert Redford turns into the highly acclaimed film by the same name in 1984 – 12 years after Waitkus dies in Massachusetts at the age of 53.