3. Baseball's Natural is John Theodore's true account of
the slick-fielding first baseman who played for the
Cubs and the Phillies in the 1940s and became
immortalized in baseball lore as the inspiration for
Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Eddie Waitkus grew
up in Boston and fought in the Pacific theater in World
War II. Following the war, Waitkus became one of the
most popular players of his era. In 1949, with his
career on the rise, his life changed dramatically in a
Chicago hotel when a 19-year-old shot him in the
chest.