HAZLETON, Pa. (AP) -Albina “Beanie” Maddon has become something of a celebrity around here since her son, Joe, coached the upstart Tampa Bay Rays to the World Series. Not that it’s gone to her head.
You can still find the chipper 75-year-old slicing tomatoes and taking orders at Third Base Luncheonette, the Hazleton sandwich shop where she’s worked for most of the past 50 years. On Saturday night, she’ll also do delivery – to her son and the rest of the Rays’ coaching staff.
Beanie and a stack of Third Base hoagies are heading to Philadelphia for Game 3.
“He says we can’t come if we don’t bring them,” joked 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 high school alma mater, Third Base looks much the same as when the black-bespectacled manager worked here briefly as a teenager – only now, Rays memorabilia and signage are everywhere, and Rays fans from Florida, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere have popped in to say hi.
rs, 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 in this coal-country city of 30,000, 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,” the 54-year-old 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, (and) nobody has to hear me,” she said.
The eldest of three children, Maddon lived and breathed sports growing up. The Cardinals fan collected baseball cards and kept statistics on his favorite players. He was a standout quarterback at Hazleton High, earning the nickname “Broad Street Joe” after his idol, “Broadway” Joe Namath. (The school renamed its baseball diamond after Maddon in 2003.)
He 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, 59, an elementary school gym teacher who grew up with Maddon, recalled playing with him in a flag football league.
“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,” said Carlyon, dropping by Third Base for a bag of chips.
After Maddon was named Tampa Bay’s manager in 2005, 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 Maddon is a favorite son, Hazleton’s baseball loyalties are mixed. A majority of locals are Phillies fans, but Yankees and Mets fans abound, too, and many of them are rooting for the Rays.
Casamato’s co-owner Dave Cassarella, 57, one of Maddon’s good friends, said Maddon called him 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 says the Series is a win-win proposition for all the local fans: “If the Phillies win, good, if the Rays win, good. So either way you’re a winner.”
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