Qfw7m [Online Library] Eddie and the Gun Girl Online

qfw7m [Online library] Eddie and the Gun Girl Online [qfw7m.ebook] Eddie and the Gun Girl Pdf Free Mark Kram DOC | *audiobook | ebooks | Download PDF | ePub Download Now Free Download Here Download eBook 2017-02-21 2017-02-21Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, UnabridgedOriginal language:EnglishPDF # 1 6.75 x .50 x 5.25l, Running time: 2 HoursBinding: MP3 CD | File size: 55.Mb Mark Kram : Eddie and the Gun Girl before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Eddie and the Gun Girl: 0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Baseball Players Treated Like Rock Stars during the late 1940's/Early 1950'sBy JoanieIt was 1949 and the Philadelphia Phillies had an all-star first baseman named Eddie Waitkus. Eddiersquo;s life and athleticism was detoured when he was shot defenseless and unaware in a hotel room. Ruth Steinhagen, a woman with a long-term mental illness and an obsessive fan of Eddiersquo;s daydreamed constantly about him. In her mind, there was only one relief from her yearning: to kill him. She sent him a message to meet her in her motel room and Eddie went to her room, curious about what it was all about. There, she shot him. (As I read this, incredible that anyone would go to a strangerrsquo;s hotel room without even meeting the person first or knowing them, I had to remember that this was a more innocent time than the present day we live in, with more reasons and history to be suspicious of strangers.)In any event, Eddie survived the shot to his gut but goes downhill from there. He eventually dies at the young age of 53 with cancer of the esophagus, his health not stellar from years of cigarettes and liquor. In the meantime, Ruth spent a short time in a mental hospital, lived a life of obscurity, working in an office for many years, never marrying and finally dies at the old age of 83, with no survivors. The United States Secret Service considers Ruth as ldquo;ground zero in the evolution of the obsessed fan.rdquo;What was interesting about this story for me was the history of the baseball player. Irsquo;ve seen the famous photographs of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. I wasnrsquo;t alive back then but after reading this story, Irsquo;ve come to realize that the baseball player was, in that time, like a rock star is now, in the present time. They were pampered and catered to, the girls and women loved and swooned over them, and they were treated like kings wherever they went. The popularity of baseball players is further explored when the book mentions actor Lupe Velez, the sultry ldquo;Mexican Spitfire,rdquo; who dated men such as Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin and others, who was once photographed holding hands with Eddie in Hollywood. (Sadly, later in life she commits suicide.) The era in which Eddie existed was different than mine and I only wonder what would have happened if he had lived in my time. Would he have lived to a ripe old age and enjoyed a longer career in baseball? Would he have ended up richer, happier, with more accolades and rewards? Would he have been more on alert for an obsessed fan (certainly more educated)? I enjoyed the story and learned a little bit about baseball history to boot.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A fresh look at a bizarre caseBy Joe DistelheimThis is a nonfiction revisiting of the weird tale of that inspired the novel and the Robert Redford movie "The Natural."Briefly; Eddie Waitkus, a first baseman with the Philadelphia Phillies, was shot and nearly killed in a Chicago hotel room in 1949 by a young woman who'd had a fan's crush on him when he played for the Cubs. The woman, Ruth Steinhagen, who'd never met the ballplayer whose pictures adorned her home, checked into the Phillies' hotel under an assumed name, lured Waitkus to her room with a note, and fired a shot into his abdomen with a rifle she'd purchased for the occasion. She said later she'd wanted to kill him because she'd never get to know him "in a normal way," and that she'd intended to kill herself, as well.Waitkus, a good-but-not-great player for the Whiz Kid-era Phillies, recovered and played again, but he went downhill quickly, on and off the field.Kram's piece is too long to be called an article, too short to be called a book. It's 51 pages. You can read it in one sitting on your Kindle (or your Kindle for PC). It's well worth your time.Eddie the Gun Girl does the basics well. With chronological orderliness, it alternately traces Waitkus' and Steinhagen's paths to that room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in downtown Chicago, chronicles the immediate medical and legal aftermath, then goes on tell you about the rest of the two protagonists' lives. (They were rather desultory lives in each case.)The added value here is Kram's ability to put you in the time and tell the story in the context of that time:Ruth Steinhagen was part of the breed known as a "bobby- soxer." Those years after The War were the era of young girls swooning over Frank Sinatra--and of "Baseball Annies" waiting outside ballparks for a glimpse of their favorite handsome baseball players. There have been several names for the type in the decades since; "groupie" comes to mind.It was still the time of mostly day baseball--exclusively day baseball on Chicago's North Side--which meant that players had their nights free to explore the after-dark life of lively places like Chicago. Waitkus was not a league leader in carousing, but we get a glimpse of how it was.It was the time of newspapers as dominant carriers of the latest news. What today would play out on cable news and sports networks was then the domain of headlines: WAITKUS TO FACE GUN GIRL IN COURT.Waitkus went through excruciating rehab, which Kram describes in detail. And then there is this account of how he got through the dog days of the 1950 season, which bolsters the argument of those who say chemical enhancement of ballplayer performance didn't begin with Jose Canseco: "The Evening Bulletin later reported that he was taking injections of `pep-up' stuff in the later innings."What happened to Steinhagen and why has nothing to do with baseball, but Kram's account gives us a sense of medical progress in (some of) our lifetimes. She never was convicted; the legal system found her insane. In that era, it was believed that psychological sickness stemmed from poor parenting; perhaps Steinhagen had an Electra complex, associating her victim with her father. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic, sent to an asylum, and given shock therapy. After 33 months, she was judged cured, and released.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A Mesmerizing TragedyBy GibbsA chilling tale of America's obsession with celebrity and the true life consequences for Eddie Waitkus.Eddie and the Gun Girl has a feel like the old radio mysteries that grips your attention for their short runtime. So much so that I highly recommend getting the audio version as it's a perfect listen on the drive to work. It's like sports combined with "Hollywood Babylon" ( the 90's tv show, not the book ).The epilogue is brilliant and a true "rosebud" moment. That it happened in 1950 makes the previous chapters fall into place. Hats off to Mark Kram Jr., this is how you end a story with uncanny class and skill!Truth be told, I find baseball to be the most boring sport on the planet. But this story nonetheless caught my attention and never let go. I thought it might be hard to give a high score to a story that is a mere 51 pages, but Mr. Kram Jr. managed to do it. I see he has other books along the same genre, which I will be looking into for sure! Eddie and the Gun Girl is the true story of the shooting of Philadelphia Phillies All-Star first baseman Eddie Waitkus by a deranged female admirer in 1949. While such incidents would become commonplace in ensuing years, as stars of every persuasion would surround themselves with bodyguards and live in increasing fear of unannounced assailants, the events of that June 14 at the elegant Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago were unprecedented. A study of the phenomenon of celebrity stalking by the United States Secret Service years later cited the unprovoked assault on Eddie by young Ruth Steinhagen as ground zero in the age of the obsessed fan. In a superbly sculpted tale of surpassing human resolve that plays on the edge of myth, Mark Kram, Jr., whose book Like Any Normal Day was selected as the winner of 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, walks us back to the world that Eddie and Ruth inhabited in the 1940s and 1950s. Fictionalized by Bernard Malamud in his classic baseball yarn, The Natural, which would be later adapted for the 1984 film starring Robert Redford, this lurid crime drew together two strangers whose lives intersected in a blaze of insanity that changed them both forever. Ruth would become steeped in the guesswork that attended the treatment of psychological illness during that era.

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