May 10, 2021 4 min read

The Uber went over the bridge, passed the ballyard, turned left, then pulled to the curb across from the ballpark’s main entrance.

“Here you will see the running, buddy!” said the driver, a swarthy young man of around 25. His face was hard, drained of life. I took him to be a student at CMU by day. I crossed the street and got into line.

I pulled out the dog-eared ticket that Joseph had given me the previous night as we had sipped tequila at an outdoor restaurant in the Strip District.

“Here,” he said. “I won’t be needing this.”

“But …” I began to protest.

“Look,” Joseph said, draining his glass and throwing it into the gutter, bitterly. “You need to see it for yourself. I cannot adequately describe the experience. It is … sheer … poetry.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” I asked, pulling the stub from his sweaty palm.

“The Running of the Pierogies!” he said dejectedly as his head sank into the palms of his hands. “The Pirates stink. But the pierogies …” He stood, staggered to the curb, climbed into a Lyft, rolled down the window and said, “Ask Bree.”

Bree. We had not spoken since that night in Paris. Now her mellifluous voice wafted from the telephone.

“Darling!” she said upon hearing my voice. “I thought you were still in France!”

“The French no longer hold attraction for me,” I said, “since Macron laid a wreath at the tomb of Bonaparte!”

“Oh, Jack!” she said, laughing. “You say the most outrageous things!”

“Do I? Do I really?”

She laughed again.

“But tell me,” I said, “what’s this that Joseph was babbling about? ‘The Running of the Pierogies?’ Is it some kind of religious festival?”

“Oh, good heavens, no,” Jack, “although some might mistake it for such!”

“I must see it for myself!”

“I’ll meet you at the park tomorrow at 7.”

The crowd was sparse, a gaggle of older men and dozens of elementary school-aged children being dragged toward the turnstiles by weary looking couples that I took to be their parents.

I handed the ticket to the gatekeeper, strolled into the shadows, stopped an usher and handed him my ticket stub.

“You have the luck tonight!” he said. “Right behind home plate!”

As I settled into my seat, I saw that fewer than 3,000 were in attendance. Bree materialized and sank down beside me.

“Sorry I’m late, darling!” she said. “Darned Parkway East!”

The craft beer was not good and I had a worse one to take the taste out of my mouth. With the home team down by 7 runs in the bottom of the fifth, I’d had enough.

“Let’s find some real liquor,” I said as I stood. “Perhaps they have cognac at Station Square?”

“Oh, no, Jack! Bree said, urgently. “Look! It’s begins!”

She pointed to a tunnel just beyond the home team’s dugout. I leaned over and peered to see what looked like five people in Mr. Potato Head costumes emerge on to the warning track.

“What the devil?”

“The pierogies!” Bree cried out. “The pandemic had forced them to run on the Clemente Bridge! But now they return! How glorious! Look … they have released them from the corrals down the leftfield line! They are racing around the warning track!”

I stood in stunned silence as several brave young men leapt from the center field bleachers into the path of the pounding pierogis. Two outran them. The third was crushed underfoot by Sauerkraut Saul and Jalapeno Hannah. But – to my surprise – the young man stood up, arms thrust heavenward in a sign of victory.

“The magnificent fool!” I heard myself say.

And then, suddenly, is was over. Cheese Chester had won.

“Oh, Jack,” Bree said, leaning into my arms in the back seat of the Uber as it chugged toward Squirrel Hill after the game. “The Buccos could have been such a darned good team together if only they’d kept McCutcheon!”

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”