A lot of publications are call this woman — who died last December at the age of 83 — the “inspiration” for the novel The Natural. I think that’s wrong. To me it was Eddie Waitkus, whom Steinhagen shot in a hotel room in 1949, that served as the inspiration. After all, it was Roy Hobbs’ battle back from the near-fatal injury that was the story.
True, if Steinhagen hadn’t lured Waitkus to her room with the promise of who knows what, he might never have been in that situation and Bernard Malamud would have had to write about something else.
The character based on Steinhagen, Harriet Byrd (played by Barbara Hershey) shot Roy Hobbs in the seminal novel of athletes with feat of clay.
Come to think of it, it might be interesting to read about the situation from her point of view.
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