Ruth Ann Steinhagen Trial: 1949

The Steinhagens said that their daughter's troubles began three years before when she went to a baseball game. "Waitkus was playing for the Cubs then. She seemed to become infatuated and couldn't talk about anything else. She had his pictures everywhere."

They said she had a nervous breakdown in December 1948. "We sent her to a psychiatrist," Mrs. Steinhagen said, "but she just seemed to get worse. She wanted to commit suicide. I was glad when they traded Waitkus to Philadelphia. I thought that would help, but it didn't."

Ruth Steinhagen seemed to enjoy the arraignment and trial. She posed for photographers and chatted gaily with the bailiff. She told a psychiatrist that she shot Waitkus because "I didn't want to be nervous all my life."

Waitkus slowly recovered. He finally left the hospital a month after the shooting. While he was recuperating at home, the Phillies filed a request to the Pennsylvania Workmen's Compensation Board to settle a dispute with an insurance company over benefits paid to Waitkus. The insurance company claimed that Waitkus was "not at work" when he went to Steinhagen's room. The Phillies claimed that Waitkus was under club surveillance while at the hotel and that ball players had a duty not to "high hat" fans. A referee appointed by the board agreed with the Phillies, but the insurance company appealed.

A little more than a year after the shooting, the state hospital reported that Steinhagen had improved remarkably. She was responding to electric shock therapy and medication. On April 17, 1952, Ruth Steinhagen was adjudged sane. Edwin T. Breen, first assistant state's attorney, said Waitkus did not wish to prosecute her. The attempted murder charge was dropped. Steinhagen said she wanted to stay at the state hospital, but as a physical therapist, not an inmate.

The Workmen's Compensation Board reversed the referee's decision on Waiikus's benefits. It said, "it is evident that his visit… was a private enterprise in which he voluntarily engaged for personal reasons and not in the course of his employment or in the furtherance of the business of his employer."