Cubs' Joe Maddon Helps Break Ground On Playground In Hometown

HAZLETON, Pa. (AP) — Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon has helped workers break ground on a $250,000 playground for his Pennsylvania hometown.

The playground is part of the Hazleton One Community Center, the brainchild of Maddon and his cousin, Elaine Maddon Curry, and her husband, Robert Curry.

Maddon helped create the Hazleton Integration Project to unite people of different cultures in the town, which has a growing Hispanic population.

The community center opened in a former Catholic school about four years ago, and the playground is the latest addition.

Maddon says the poorer immigrant families in Hazleton are "exactly what we looked like in the late '50s and early '60s ... when there were four families living in an apartment."

Local developer William Rinaldi is paying for the playground.