Ep. 004 - Eddie Waitkus & the Honey with a Gun

Written by: Wyatt Schroeder
Narrated by: JohnPaul Beattie
Sound Design by: JohnPaul Beattie
Produced by: Anna Ready

Act I

It’s June 14th, 1949

Eddie Waitkus and Bill Nicholson step into the lobby of the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. They’re only an hour removed from dinner with their Philadelphia Phillies teammate, Russ Meyer. And only an evening removed from a 9 to 2 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Though Eddie already had a few drinks, the night was young for the two friends. Let’s go to the Beachwalk and see if Meyer is up for a night cap, Eddie urged Nicholson. 

The bellhop caught Eddie’s attention. There was a message for him from a woman staying at the Edgewater.  Eddie looked at the name – Ruth Ann Burns. He didn’t recognize her. But the bellhop said she was from Portland Street in Boston. That made Waitkus pause. He grew up on Portland Street. Maybe she is a distant relative or a forgotten childhood friend. 

If I close my eyes, I can almost see his fingers fumble with the note. It read: [ANNA VO] “It is extremely important that I see you as soon as possible. We’re not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about. I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain this to you as I am leaving the hotel the day after tomorrow. I realize this is out of the ordinary but, as I say, it is extremely important.” 

Eddie told Nicholson to grab a table for the three of them. He would be along soon. Eddie phoned the room, arresting Ruth Ann from her sleep. 

Room 1297-A. It’s 11:30pm.

As he climbed the stairs to Ruth Ann’s room, I can’t pretend to know what occupied his mind. He was back in Chicago, a season after being traded from Cubs, the team that had taken a chance on him and launched his career. Known as a quiet leader, he likely gave no thought to the fact he was the leading vote-getter for the upcoming All-Star Game. 

Ruth Ann answered the knock. Eddie immediately wandered past her, the smell of whiskey sours perfuming from her breath. He took a seat in the armchair by the window. Impatient, Eddie asked what this was all about. Ruth Ann, instead of answering him, opened her closet door, reaching into the shallow recess. 

Eddie, calm and confident, as always, looked out the window. I’m assuming he looked out at Lake Michigan, the prized scenery that made the Edgewater a destination. When he looked back, Ruth Ann had a .22 caliber rifle pointed right at him.

“I have a surprise for you.” She made Eddie stand up. “For two years, you’ve been bothering me, and now you’re going to die.” Without hesitation, eyes unblinking, she pulled the trigger and shot Eddie at point-blank range. Eddie Waitkus slumped to the floor. He had been shot through the chest. Ruth Ann dropped the gun and kneeled by his side. She reached out and held his hand as it shivered.  

“Baby, what did you do that for?” he whispered.

Eddie Waitkus was dying. 

Act II

You may have heard that scene before. It may sound like something from the silver screen. It is. Robert Redford in the movie, The Natural, suffers a similar fate. Stalking in sports has unfortunately become commonplace in the Internet age, but it wasn’t invented with dial-up. How did we get to this point, Eddie bleeding out on the carpet? How did a distant fantasy from an adoring fan become a deadly stalking episode? 

Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Eddie played bare-handed. It took years before his father saved up and bought a glove. All his father could find was a left-handed first-baseman’s mitt. Right-handed Eddie, ever polite, didn’t have the heart to correct his father, so he learned to throw with his left hand and became a first baseman. Design by necessity. 

Eddie’s first lesson on death came at the young age of 14. His mother was hospitalized with pneumonia and died only days later. 

When he was a sophomore at Cambridge Latin High, he took his now well-worn mitt and walked onto the high school baseball team. His coach said there was no room on the roster for Eddie; they already had a first baseman. Without hesitation, Eddie challenged the coach to hit a ball by him. Just one ball. Manning the first bag, the coach drilled liner after chopper after liner – no ball touched the outfield grass. Smooth. Collected. He was a natural. Soon Eddie became a high school baseball star and came to the attention of the Chicago Cubs.

After two seasons in the Cubs minor leagues, Eddie was called up to the bigs for the 1941 season and started as the Cubs’ opening day first baseman. He played in 12 games before duty sent him back to the minor leagues. In 1943, like so many other ball players of age, he joined the armed forces. The world was at war; baseball was put on hold. He was assigned to the 544th Engineering Boat and Shore Regiment, shipped over to New Guinea in 1944. If you’ve heard the stories from your grandparents, you can imagine the horror that surrounded Eddie. Death pervaded the air, inches in hours. Eddie watched countless friends killed just a distance away. His hands had become an instrument of war. 

Eddie only narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by the Japanese during the fighting in the Philippines. It was enough to stain a healthy brain. But a proud son of the mid-century doesn’t talk about the scars. I know that my family members that saw combat didn’t discuss it with their children for decades. Those stories are left to the newspapers and the neighborhood VFW halls. Eddie finished the war with 10 awards of meritorious service, including four bronze stars. He had endured 34 months at war. If the specter of death followed him back to the states, Eddie didn’t speak a word about it. 

Three seasons of baseball continued without Eddie. The war hero had to fight his way back into the lineup. The Cubs had the 1945 MVP, Phil Cavarretta, entrenched in the first base role. But Charlie Grimm, the Cubs manager, loved Waitkus’ glove and moved Phil to right field to make room. It was a cunning move. Eddie won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1946 and became a fan favorite.

“I had my first good look at him in 1947,” Ruth Ann Steinhagen said in a court-ordered autobiography. Steinhagen was her real name, not Burns as she wrote in her note to Eddie. “We used to wait for them to come out of the clubhouse after the game, and the time I was watching him, I was building in my mind the idea of killing him.”

Ruth Ann would sit in the stands in Wrigley Field, enamored as Eddie handled nearly every grounder that came his way. It began as a distant affection for the good-looking natural, but swirled into an obsession. She admitted years later to having a predilection for stalking. She had already spent hours stalking movie star Alan Ladd and Cubs infielder Peanuts Lowrey. But Eddie – her Eddie – was different. 

I wonder what it was about Eddie. He wasn’t the most famous ballplayer – Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were in their prime. He wasn’t the richest, though he dressed like he was. I have to imagine it’s that he was near. She was in Chicago. He was in Chicago. 75% of victims are stalked by someone they know. But Ruth Ann had never met Eddie. She fit the stalking profile that psychologists call “the predator.”  

In her small Chicago apartment, she took scissors to the Chicago Tribune and sports magazines, building a shrine to Eddie. Because Eddie came from Boston, she trained herself to crave baked beans. Because Eddie's parents came from Lithuania, she began to learn Lithuanian. 

The obsession grew. A fragile and narrow mania. And then, the unspeakable happened. . . the Cubs traded Eddie Waitkus to the Philadelphia Phillies at the end of the 1948 season. Many baseball greats, like Rogers Hornsby and Charlie Grimm, were confused by the owner’s move. “They can’t trade the best first baseman in the business,” Hornsby said. It was a blunder for the Cubs, but for Ruth Ann, it was unendurable. How could she live with her Eddie so far away?

Eddie packed up his Chicago apartment and traveled to the City of Brotherly Love, his new team and his new home. He would be joining his two best friends, two other Cubs cast-offs, Russ Meyer and Bill Nicholson. 

Over 700 miles removed from her love, Ruth Ann became committed to her dreadful act – she had to murder Eddie Waitkus. She scanned the Phillies 1949 schedule – when would he be in Chicago? The Phillies came to Chicago for one game on May 21st. I don’t know why but that day didn’t fit Ruth Ann’s scheme. She made no attempt on Eddie’s life that day. Instead, she settled on the first game of a four-game series between the Cubs and the Phillies. June 14th. It’s said that she booked her room at Edgewater a month in advance.

The night of June 14th came. 

Knowing how this ends, you have to picture Ruth Ann as she appeared on that night. Ruth Ann was all of 19 years old. A typist for a local insurance company. She wore the floral print, flowy dresses of the time, her brunette hair curling to her shoulders. She approached the bell hop and offered him $5 if he’d deliver a note to Eddie Waitkus. After he accepted, she ordered two whiskey sours and a daiquiri and headed to her room. Room 1297-A.

She workshopped the plan in her head. She would stab Eddie as soon as he crossed the threshold and then she would kill herself. A murder-suicide. It would end the agony. She would rest knowing that no one could have her Eddie, no team, no woman could steal him away. 

The knock came and Eddie immediately walked past her. It threw off the scenario in her mind, the knife would not do. She couldn’t press the metal into his flesh. She reached into the closet. This is how prepared she was for this moment. She brought a gun as a back-up plan. 

Immediately after Eddie fell to the ground, she knew that she couldn’t kill herself. And she couldn’t finish the job on poor Eddie. She grabbed the phone from the receiver and dialed the hotel operator. She confessed the crime. Send the ambulance. As the emergency responders scrambled, she held his hand . . . the first time she had touched him, the moment she had dreamed about for years. His hand in hers. She loved him so much as his blood seeped into the carpet. 

Ruth Ann sat in the Chicago police wagon, draped in a white scarf. Her beige coat masked any blood that stained her blouse. As the engine roared she couldn’t have known if Eddie had survived. Ruth Ann was taken to the Summerdale police station on the North Side. She would be charged with intent to murder. She would stand trial.

What do you think Eddie was thinking as he laid on the operating table? I wonder if he could maintain consciousness for long. His fever wouldn’t break. He underwent three surgeries but it still hadn’t stabilized him. The doctors huddled and concluded they needed a fourth operation to remove the bullet. Ruth Ann’s gift had to be removed to save him.

Staring at a photograph of Ruth Ann’s arraignment, all these years later, I can almost convince myself of her innocence. She looks so young. The curls of her hair, the neat buttons of her black skirt. She looks like she belongs next door to the Cleavers, not in a courtroom. 

When she spoke, she had no remorse, no regret. As Ruth Ann told the Cook County authorities, [ANNA VO] “Just had to shoot somebody. Only in that way could I relieve the nervous tension I’ve been under the last two years.” She just had to shoot somebody. She just had to shoot Eddie. 

The bullet was removed and hope sprouted. Eddie would live. He spent the next month in the hospital. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to assume that Eddie thought about all the good boys in uniform – the uniforms that stormed the beaches and never made it home. And the uniforms that stormed the field that evening to delight fans and live out a childhood dream. Someone else’s dream had brought him to an inch of his life.

17 days after the shooting, Judge McDermott and the grand jury considered the charge and gave its ruling: Ruth Ann was insane. The judge ordered her to Kankakee State Hospital. In just under three hours from the ruling, Ruth Ann was confined to her new home, the imprisonment for the tortured mind. 

By early August, three months removed from that Edgewater night, the Phillies were in a deep slump. Losing ten of their last 13 games. Before a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Phillies sat around the clubhouse, readying themselves for another first pitch. The door swung open, an unexpected guest. Eddie Waitkus walked through the door. His teammates were ecstatic to see him. Still, they couldn’t help but notice how much weight he had lost, how his shirt hung off him like a towel on the clothesline. 

Whether from Eddie, for Eddie, or out of pure luck, the Phillies started winning.

Two weeks later, they held “Eddie Waitkus Night” at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. To a standing ovation of 20,000 fans, Eddie returned to the diamond. Dick Sisler, the first baseman who had replaced Eddie, presented him with a bronze first baseman’s glove, telling him, “You put me on the spot on June 14th. So I hope you have a speedy recovery and come back and take the job away from me.”

Eddie began his recovery. But it was anything short of speedy. He spent the next four months in Clearwater Beach, Florida. As Eddie remembered it later, it was “the four most horrible months of my life.”

Physical therapy took its toll. Removed from the people he loved, the nightlife he craved, and disconnected from every expectation, Eddie tired of resilience. He had played his last inning. He would quit. This is such a human reaction to me. I can’t imagine the scar tissue this man was living with. He returned from a world war to be shot in a Chicago hotel room. One trauma stacked on top of another. Of course he wanted to give up. 

But then another woman intervened in Eddie’s life. As he told a radio show in 1953 – yes, he’s speaking in the third person here:

“Then, he met a girl. A girl who knew nothing of baseball. . . Their few ‘Hellos’ on the beaches grew to infrequent dates. Slowly he started to withdraw from his shell and lose the fear he had developed of people. Slowly, through her influence, he started to take interest again in the world around him. And with her quiet confidence to help him, he went into his training with renewed interest. She had faith he could come back, so he HAD to do it, for her sake. . . As it happens in fiction, they were married, and went back to baseball together”

Carol Webel gave his recovery the inspiration it needed. The journey had been grueling – inches in hours. But the path – from Edgewater to Clearwater to Shibe Park– led him back to his base. He rejoined the Philadelphia Phillies for the 1950 season.

I grew up outside of Philadelphia and let me tell you: The 1950 Phillies are the stuff of legends. Known to history as The Whiz Kids, because the lineup was rife with rookies. Without a single lofty expectation, the rookies outperformed every metric, skyrocketing the Phillies in the standings and sending them to the playoffs. But the youth needed a mature anchor. Eddie and his ever-present companion, good-old Bill Nicholson, became the elder statesmen. 

Given all that Eddie had seen, he calmed the boys down, kept them focused. He was a natural leader. 

The Phillies dominated the National League. But a late-season slump allowed the Brooklyn Dodgers to catch up with the Phillies in the standings. With one week left in the season, the Phils lost four straight games, setting up a crucial season-ending series against the Dodgers. Dropping the first game to Brooklyn, the drama was set for the final game of the season. If the Phillies win, they claim the National League pennant. 

After an epic pitcher’s duel between Robin Roberts and Don Newcombe, Eddie scores the run that puts the Phillies in the lead. An inning later, Eddie catches the ball that clinches it. Teammates storm the mound, embracing each other as brothers-in-arms. The Phillies have won the 1950 pennant. 

The Phillies end up losing the World Series to the New York Yankees. But it was a banner year for Eddie.

The Associated Press named Eddie the Comeback Player of the Year.

Act III 

In 1951, Carol and Eddie took their vows. Marrying with best man, Bill Nicholson, by their side. As the newly weds settled into their new life, news came out of Chicago. A test to their bonds. 

Ruth Ann had been declared sane.

 Just as the 1952 season threw out its first pitch, Ruth Ann walked out of Kankakee State Hospital. She had spent 33 months there, only one month less than Eddie spent in World War Two. She was free to rest in her own bed, free to walk the North Side streets, free to take in a baseball game. Understandably, this unnerved Eddie. As Eddie’s son, Edward Waitkus Jr, said, “His nerves were shattered for a while. The fall from grace as an athlete was difficult for him. And he didn’t really recognize the problems, but they hampered him for the rest of his life.” Eddie confided in his teammate Russ Meyer that Ruth Ann being released scared him. Ruth Ann had allegedly told the Chicago police that she would kill Eddie if he ever married. Well, he was married. 

Slowly, it became clear to Eddie that Ruth Ann no longer posed a threat. Her stalking and violent ways had calmed; the therapy seems like it had done its job. As Eddie’s son put it, “Once he realized she was not going to be a threat to him, he wasn’t vengeful or angry. He understood he was a victim based on nothing other than fantasy.” 

Ruth Ann Steinhagen lived out the rest of her life on the northside of Chicago, living with her parents. Not far from Wrigley Field. The same field stands today, where she took a seat on the bleachers and fell in love with a sure-handed first baseman. 

Ruth Ann died in December of 2012. Reclusive in her later years, the Chicago Tribune didn’t learn of her death for three months. She left no close family or friends behind to tell her side of the story. To share if she ever felt remorseful. If she kept any vestige of her shrine to Eddie. Or if she simply let the whole episode behind in Kankakee. 

On September 20th, 1955, Eddie played his last professional baseball game, hitting a home run off the Dodgers’ Don Newcombe, the same pitcher he had faced in that crucial 1950 National League pennant game. As he rounded the bases, he spotted his wife Carol in the stands. In an out-of-character moment for the understated professional, Eddie tipped his cap. 

Eddie’s son put it succinctly: “He survived three years in the jungles of the Philippines with barely a scratch, and he comes back here and this ‘crazy honey with a gun,’ as he used to say, takes him out.” Reading about Eddie, it’s hard to not have the letters PTSD come to mind. A diagnosis like that wasn’t around in the 50’s. And after hanging up his cleats and his weathered glove, Eddie continued to medicate with a stiff drink. Each gulp blurring what images remained deep within. 

Unable to handle the disorder that consumed their home, Carol took the kids and moved out. He spiraled in his depression and his alcoholism, committing himself to the VA Hospital in Philadelphia after a severe nervous breakdown. 

He had seen so much. Being alone must have been its own kind of torture. I’m sure that he could distract himself with the bright lights and the daily routine of a professional athlete, but that was all behind him now. If he closed his eyes, I have to imagine that he was transported to his mother’s death bed; or taken to images from the Philippines; or to the Edgewater Hotel. The trauma of stalking is very real, as real as the bullet hole in Eddie’s chest. Now, we have a whole behavioral health system to help someone like Eddie. At least to give him the option to work through the trauma. At the time, Eddie only had baseball. 

His last time on a baseball diamond came as an instructor at Ted Williams’ Baseball Camp in Lakeville, south of Boston. Days after leaving Ted’s camp, Eddie entered the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain, complaining of pneumonia. He was never to leave the building. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died on September 16th, 1972. He was 53 years old. Dying so young, it feels unnatural. A man known for unprecedented calm, Eddie took a tortured mind to the Cambridge Cemetery. The scars both external and unseen. 

In 1969, Philadelphia Phillies fans named Eddie Waitkus as the greatest first baseman in Phillies history. 

Epilogue

That’s it. That’s the story of Eddie and Ruth Ann. I have to say: I wish their story was unique in major league sports. But the legacy of this crime isn’t confined to the 1950’s. It isn’t confined to baseball].  That Chicago night was one of the first instances of a violent celebrity-stalking incident, a crime that has been copycatted in all major sports. You don’t have to keep your television on for long before you hear a terrible story of stalking. 

Eddie’s story might nudge you into thinking that men are equally the victims in stalking cases. Yes, it happens to men. But nowhere near at the same rates as women. 1 in 6 women are victims and survivors of stalking. 1 out of 19 men will suffer the same. 

It took until 1990 for the first state to pass anti-stalking legislation. Three years later, all 50 states had criminalized any threatening action that brings “reasonable fear for your safety.” 

If you or someone you know fears for their safety, call 911. If you want to get resources on stalking, call Victim Connect at 855-484-2846

When I reflect on this story, I keep thinking about how we become defined by the things that happen. Either happen by us or to us. Eddie could have been defined as a war hero. He could have been a baseball footnote as a member of the Whiz Kids. Both things that took his grit and skill. Instead, he’s defined by what happened TO him. Defined by getting shot. We are more than the events of our lives. We are not one event. Or even the sum of all the events. 

If you haven’t read The Natural by Malamud yet, go and pick up a copy. Malamud sums up Eddie’s story with this quote from the book: “We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.” 

Thanks for listening. We will see you at the ballpark.