Odds are one of the four Republican state senators in Massachusetts has a better chance of getting one of his bills passed than he does of catching a foul ball at a Major League Baseball game. Unless that senator is Robert Hedlund.
The 11-term incumbent from Weymouth is a magnet when it comes to foul balls, going back to grammar school when former Red Sox third-base coach Eddie Popowski fielded a couple foul balls and tossed them into the stands, where the young Hedlund grabbed them.
Since then, Hedlund has caught three more foul balls at Fenway Park and another at the old Shea Stadium in New York. He also caught one at a spring training game, though he dismisses that the way ball players dismiss Grapefruit League results. (A couple years ago the Wall Street Journal tried to determine the likelihood of catching a foul at a Major League Baseball game and put the odds at somewhere between 884 and 1,189 to 1.)
“My first one was a one-hander off the bat of Don Baylor,” says Hedlund, relishing the memory. “I held onto my hot dog with one hand and snagged it with the other.”
He missed a ball a few years ago in Cincinnati when he dropped a foul that smacked his hand at “about 100 miles an hour.”
Hedlund says, tongue firmly implanted in cheek, that the foul ball experience has made him a better legislator. “It’s taught me to be alert, nimble, be able to maneuver and adapt, stay focused and, of course, to be fiscally conservative, since I didn’t drop the hot dog,” he says.
