HAZLETON, Pa. (AP) – Beanie Maddon and her hoagies are headed to the World Series.
On most days, the Tampa Bay manager’s mom can be found slicing tomatoes and taking orders at Third Base Luncheonette, the sandwich shop where she’s worked for nearly 50 years.
On Saturday night, she’ll also be delivering – a stack of subs to son Joe and the rest of the Rays staff before Game 3 against Philadelphia.
“He says we can’t come if we don’t bring them,” quipped Beanie, wearing a Rays T-shirt and taking a break from Friday’s lunch-hour rush.
Housed in a yellow-brick building across the street from Joe Maddon’s old high school, Third Base looks much the same as it did when the bespectacled manager worked there briefly as a teenager.
Now, though, Rays memorabilia and signs are everywhere, and Tampa Bay fans from Florida, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere have popped in to say hey to the chipper, 75-year-old Beanie.
coal country, about 100 miles north of Philadelphia, is Phillies country.
The son and grandson of plumbers, Maddon is fond of talking about his hometown and returns to Hazleton at least once a year, usually around Christmas. He’s already made New Year’s Eve reservations for 15 to 20 people at another favorite haunt, Casamato’s Famiglia Ristorante.
“I think if you grew up where I grew up and when I grew up, the one word that comes to mind is respect. That’s the one thing that’s pounded into you between a Polish mother and Italian father and nuns through the eighth grade,” Maddon said.
“And then the support. The thing that I think is underestimated is when you grow up in a community like that and coming from a large family like I did, you truly were raised by more than your mother and father. If my uncle saw me getting out of line, I was smacked in a heartbeat … you were covered everywhere you went.”
Maddon and his family lived in an apartment atop the plumbing shop. Beanie Maddon still lives there, and nervously watches her son’s games in the dark.
“I just sit there, by myself. Whatever I want to say, I could say. Nobody has to hear me,” she said.
The eldest of three children, Maddon’s life was sports when he grew up. He rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals, rather than the Phils, and collected baseball cards and kept statistics.
He was a standout quarterback at Hazleton High, earning the nickname “Broad Street Joe” after the player he liked the most, “Broadway” Joe Namath. The school renamed its baseball diamond after Maddon in 2003.
Maddon played football and baseball at Lafayette College in Easton before joining the Angels organization, first as a minor league catcher and then as a coach.
Don Carlyon, an elementary school gym teacher who grew up with Maddon, recalled playing with him as a kid.
“He’s always been really confident, even in flag football. He threw darts. I was lucky enough to be his wide receiver and it was tough not to catch the passes he threw,” Carlyon said while dropping by Third Base for a bag of chips Friday.
After Maddon was hired to become Tampa Bay’s manager for the 2006 season, he celebrated with friends and family at Casamato’s. Carlyon said he talked about his plans for the flailing Rays, how he would stress the fundamentals.
“He explained everything he was going to do to make this a better team, and he stuck with it,” Carlyon said. “I don’t think there’s a person in here who knows Joey who didn’t think he’d get to where he is now.”
Though the 54-year-old Maddon is a favorite son, Hazleton’s baseball loyalties are mixed. A majority are Phillies fans, but Yankees and Mets fans abound, too. Then there are the newer Rays rooters.
Casamato’s co-owner Dave Cassarella, one of Maddon’s good friends, said the manager called Monday night with an important question.
“He didn’t even say hello. He said, ‘OK, who you sticking with?’ I said, ‘Joe, you know who I’m sticking with. I’m a Philadelphia fan since I’m a baby, but I gotta stick with the Rays.”’
Beanie Maddon likes the logic. She said the Series is a win-win proposition for even the Philadelphia faithful.
“If you’re a Phillies fan, you’re rooting for Joe yet. If the Phillies win, good. If the Rays win, good. So either way you’re a winner.”
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