"Lies My Blogger Told Me"-- one that went missing, part 2
Here's another one that didn't make the book, but posted to the site approximately five years ago. From March 22, 2013...Wikipedia Mysteries, Pilot
The trophy for moving one's life from fame to total seclusion and public retirement goes to Ruth Ann Steinhagen of Chicago, Illinois. Do you know who this woman is of whom I speak? Small chance. Know what became of her? I'm quite positive you don't.
Ruth Ann Steinhagen became famous in the summer of 1949 for shooting Eddie Waitkus, All-Star first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. She induced him to a hotel room in her hometown and shot him in the chest. She was only 19 years old at the time. The shot barely missed Waitkus' heart, but the ballplayer survived, even returning to baseball to help the Phillies to the "Whiz Kids" National League pennant of 1950. After Steinhagen was released from a mental institution in '52, where she had received electroconvulsive therapy, Waitkus declined to press charges. (This was the golden age of gentlemen.) He died in 1972 of esophageal cancer after reportedly suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for years due to the shooting.
This incident of celebrity-based violence was the inspiration for the 1952 Bernard Malamud novel "The Natural," which, in 1984, became a popular and quite marvelous feature film starring Robert Redford as a wounded pitcher-turned-slugger of Arthurian proportions, and Barbara Hershey as his obsessed admirer.
So what did become of Ruth Ann Steinhagen? Would it surprise you to know that she died on December 29th of last year? In the six decades after her release from the hospital, it seems she moved in with her parents and a sister. The parents both died during the 1970s, and the sister died in 2007. She lived in the same house for her final 42 years, only a few miles from the now-demolished Edgewater Beach Hotel on Chicago's north side where she shot Waitkus. She never spoke publicly about the incident.
So obscure had she become in the intervening years that her death did not get noticed by the news media until last week, at three months distance, when a Chicago Tribune reporter happened upon her death record while researching another story.
Ruth Ann Steinhagen, one-time subject of lurid fascination slipped into what was likely a merciful obscurity.
Tomorrow on Wikipedia Mysteries: A famous musician is shot dead in New York City's Central Park more than three decades ago. What became of his songwriting partner? Who are these two men? That's tomorrow on Wikipedia Mysteries, only on the CM Blog.
posted by CM @ 3:55 PM
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