What he has done is to contrive a sustained and elaborate allegory in which the For Bernard Malamud's interests go far beyond baseball. It's an unusually fine novel, too, although I don't know how the professionals are going to take it. That novel has finally been written and if the author does not come from the ranks of baseball reporters, at least he hails from Brooklyn and there are those who feel that qualifies Number would ever produce a serious novel about baseball. 29.By Harry Sylvester The Natural By Bernard Malamud.Īck in the Thirties the baseball writers making the swing through the West with major league teams occasionally wondered whether one of their She faded into obscurity, and according to the Chicago Tribune, died in Chicago on Dec.

Steinhagen was deemed sane in 1952 and released from the mental institution. Her story became well-known throughout Chicago, and several years later author Bernard Malamud used it as the inspiration for his novel, The Natural. Steinhagen never stood trial for the shooting, but she was sentenced to time in a mental institution. Steinhagen's character, named Harriet Bird, was portrayed by Barbara Hershey. Waitkus is the inspiration for Roy Hobbs, Redford's character, in The Natural. Waitkus nearly died several times during surgery to remove the bullet, but he instead made a full recovery and returned to the diamond the next year. There, she took out a rifle from her closet and shot him in the chest. When the Phillies came to Chicago the next year to face the Cubs, the 19-year-old Steinhagen checked into Waitkus' hotel and lured him into her room. Steinhagen was so heartbroken when Waitkus was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1948 season that she decided her only option was to kill him. Her story starts some 60 years ago, when as a girl growing up in Chicago, Steinhagen had a crush on the Cubs handsome first baseman, Eddie Waitkus. Steinhagen's actions inspired Bernard Malamud's novel, which was turned into a popular and award-winning film some three decades later. If it wasn't for Ruth Ann Steinhagen, who died recently in Chicago, Robert Redford's The Natural may have never existed.

The natural malamud