The Natural
Author Bernard Malamud, who was not a baseball fan himself, took the basic elements of the Waitkus story and wove them along with various baseball legends (notably Joe Jackson) into a novel, a morality tale called The Natural. The book was published in 1952, and was eventually made into a film that was released in 1984.
The DVD extras for the film contain a biography of Waitkus, which points out that writers in his rookie year often called Waitkus "a natural", a fact that Malamud presumably picked up on. Malamud's version of the tale ended tragically, and unknowingly foreshadowed Waitkus' own downfall as a player.
Read more about this topic: Eddie Waitkus