PITTSBURGH — Olive Visco has always loved to cook the old-school Polish foods she grew up on, sometimes even for friends in her adopted city of Pittsburgh.

But until the COVID-19 pandemic stymied her career as a bar manager, the Venango County, Pennsylvania, native never dreamed she’d make an actual living from rolling, folding and pinching her maternal grandmother Statia’s recipe for pierogi and selling them via social media under the handle @polsaklaskapgh.

Upon earning a degree at Chatham University in 2016, “I wanted to make food videos or maybe be a PR person for a restaurant,” she says.

After falling in love with the city’s burgeoning food scene, she instead ended up working both front and back of house jobs at Downtown’s now-closed Union Standard.

Visco had just lost her next job as bar manager at Iron Born Pizza in the summer of 2020 when she started selling her homemade pierogi on Instagram. Unemployment checks were slow to arrive, “and I needed to make money” to cover rent for the Bloomfield apartment she shared with her pugs, Oyster and Mussels.

“So I thought, ‘What am I really good at?’”

While most of the restaurant jobs she’d taken since age 15 involved waitressing or bussing tables, she’d also worked on the line at Iron Born before taking over its bar program in 2019. So while she’d never cooked for a living per se, she wasn’t a complete novice either.

In fact, growing up on a 100-acre llama farm in Franklin with “pretty hippie parents” — her father, Kip, is a third-generation family physician and her mom, Victoria, was head of PR at a local hospital — Visco was in the kitchen at a very early age learning to make the foods of her Polish heritage.

Traditional dishes like golubki, mizeria and the cold beet salad known as surówka z buraków were always on the table for special occasions and family holidays. By age 6 or 7, Visco was also mastering the art of pierogi making at the side of her Polish “bachi,” despite the beloved matriarch’s inability to speak due to early onset dementia.

And not just any pierogi, but plump, hand-pinched dumplings with beautifully braided edges and umami-packed fillings like kapusta, a Polish cabbage dish that marries sauerkraut with onions, mushrooms and a pinch of sugar with the hot sizzle of white wine.

Fueled by muscle memory built up over time, “She made pierogi until the year before she died,” Visco remembers of her grandmother with a wistful smile.

That her own dumplings would prove just as mouthwatering to pierogi fans when she offered them for sale by the dozen was nothing short of amazing. “I’m not from Pittsburgh, so I didn’t understand the novelty of it,” she says with a laugh.

The 30-year-old mother-to-be soon learned that people in the ‘Burgh don’t just like pierogi; they love them. “So I thought, ‘This is the city for it.’”

Her many connections in the hospitality industry and on social media made selling the dumplings she hand filled and folded in her tiny kitchen easy. Soon, friends and friends of friends were ordering them to the tune of 500 a week on Instagram and Facebook.

“People were lining up outside my apartment on Penn Avenue,” she recalls with a grin. “It was a lot of hard work,” but within a year, she was really catching on as the Pierogi Girl of Bloomfield.

She named her growing takeout business Polska Laska, slang for “Polish Chick.”

“I wanted something fun, and a little slaying,” she explains. “It’s a little sassy, a little flirty, a little naughty” — kind of like the girl herself, who at almost 9 months pregnant, couldn’t stop laughing and joking as she rolled out some dough for a demo on a recent Monday — wearing a pair of dangling pierogi earrings.

Eventually, Visco’s sales outgrew her home kitchen and she moved operations — first to a catering kitchen in Etna and then to Gooski’s in Polish Hill, which is owned by her husband Sky’s family.

Last fall, she took a giant leap of faith and set up shop in a corner storefront on North Canal Street in Sharpsburg that formerly housed Mindy’s Take & Bake. She wasn’t looking to move, she says, but couldn’t pass up what seemed like a perfect opportunity when a customer told her it was available.

Today, the spacious commercial kitchen filled with professional equipment allows her and former Mindy’s employee Shaina Satterfield to crank out around 1,500 pierogi a week in an amazing variety of flavors.

Church lady pierogi these are not. While potato cheddar, farmer’s cheese and kapusta are, and will always be, perennial favorites, Visco is not afraid to experiment with what some might consider crazy fillings.

The hundred-plus varieties she’s dished up over the years include everything from bacon cheeseburger, Philly cheesesteak and meatloaf to Buffalo chicken, blueberry cheesecake and “Weak Night” (made with Maruchan ramen, cream cheese, egg, Parmesan and scallion). In early June, “cowboy” pierogi filled with chorizo, corn, black beans and scallions were available as a special.

“I try to create as much flavor as I can,” she says.

She also occasionally wraps the dough around seafood just to be fun, even though she knows it’s a hard sell. A lemony, herb-kissed clams casino was probably her weirdest pierogi, she says. “But it wasn’t a crazy amount.”

Also a little different: She uses the vegan dough she grew up on instead of one enriched with dairy.

“Eggs and sour cream were expensive, and a luxury for my grandparents,” she explains. “So our dough has always been just flour, water and salt.”

The resultant pierogi are thinner and crispier than traditional church lady dumplings and easier to make vegan across the board.

Many are crafted using local ingredients that are in season — this spring she made them with ramps, and she’s currently contemplating pairing mulberries with farmer’s cheese — and they are sold both fresh and ready to cook as well as frozen. (They keep for about three months in the freezer.) They cost $12 for 6 and $20 for a dozen.

Due to give birth to her first child in July, Visco plans on taking a short sabbatical over the summer to prepare for turning the takeout business into a small sit-down cafe. While the grand opening date is still in flux, she expects to open it sometime in the fall with seating for around 25 customers.

Along with pierogi — which you can also find at Kelly’s Bar and Lounge in East Liberty and on weekends at pop-ups — customers will be able to enjoy everything else she currently offers for takeout, including sauerkraut pancakes, Polska platters, stuffed cabbage and haluska. Most sides cost $5.

She’ll also return to doing pop-ups and teaching classes, as well as the occasional catering job.

“Cooking was always just a hobby,” she says. “I never dreamed that one day I would own a business where I’d be able to cook as well.”

While at times Visco feels overwhelmed as a small business owner, she hopes that every year she’ll be able to step up with something bigger, better and more creative.

“I love feeding my community,” she says. “For me, it’s not about getting rich but creating a space to cook some really good food that makes people feel good about spending their money. I feel really lucky to be able to work hard and have something to show for it.”

The fact she’s passing down her Polish heritage to others by passing down her grandmother’s recipes?

“What I do is a privilege for sure,” she says. “To do something I love and make people happy and make connections.”

Can’t wait until she’s back in the kitchen or just curious to try making pierogi yourself? Because her super-simple dough is so consistent, Visco is confident anyone could learn to make her pierogi once they get a feel for it.

“It’s knowing the [proper] texture,” she says, which can take some time to perfect. “It’s not a hard know, but you know when you know.”

For beginners, she offers some tips.

— Add the flour slowly, one cup at a time, continually stirring as you go. She starts with a metal whisk, but switches to a folding action with a rubber spatula when the dough starts to stick. The goal is dough that comes together into a raggedy ball.

— When it’s time to knead the dough, don’t be afraid to use a surprising amount of flour. “When I teach classes, my students always ask, ‘More flour?’ And I promise you, more flour!” That includes dusting the dough itself in addition to the work surface.

— Figuring out when the dough is ready for rolling is all about touch. The ball should feel soft and supple, and quickly release when you poke your finger into it. Also: It doesn’t need to rest like pasta dough. You can use it immediately.

— While rolling, use your fingers to flatten out any dimples in the dough and flip it a few times so you roll on both sides. The finished product should be very thin without being translucent. “We don’t want the dough to take over the story,” she says, “by overpowering the filling.”

— Any 3- to 4-inch circular glass with a sharp edge can be used to cut the dough into circles, and you can also find any number of pierogi cutters online. Her preferred tool is the same stainless steel Koriko cocktail shaker she used while bartending.

— To release the dough circles without tearing them, give the glass a push and a little wiggle. They should be slightly sticky so they seal properly when crimped, but still come out in “gorgeous little Polish moons.”

— Visco is pretty generous with the filling — she uses a 2-ounce ice cream scoop — but “I don’t want my pierogi to be skimpy,” she says, “and I don’t want a big dough ball.”

— Be sure to drain them on a wire rack after boiling in salted water. (They’re done when they float to the top). And for a crispier meal, fry them in oil on both sides over medium-high heat instead of butter, which can easily burn. “But butter with your onions is always a good thing to do,” she says.

Kapusta Pierogi

Olive Visco, owner of Polska Laska, holds her signature pierogi in her Sharpsburg restaurant. (Lucy Schaly/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Kapusta is a traditional Polish cabbage dish made with onions, mushrooms and sauerkraut. Full of umami, it’s often served with broth as a soup, but at Polska Laska in Sharpsburg, Olive Visco uses it as a savory filling for her handcrafted vegan pierogi.

Aldi’s jarred sauerkraut is her preferred brand not only because it’s the cheapest, but also delicious, “and I transform it anyway.”

She likes to use white wine to deglaze the mixture as it cooks in a pan but, depending on your taste, “a nice Polish lager would be delicious, too!” she says. Water is also fine.

When making the dumplings, remember that flour is your friend! “The key is to keep your dough and surface sprinkled with flour at all times to prevent dough sticking to the table,” she says.

You can re-roll dough scraps, but only once. After that, it’s too tough and dense.

INGREDIENTS

For kapusta filling:

1 24-ounce jar sauerkraut

1 medium white onion, chopped

Handful of chopped mushrooms

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

2 teaspoons sugar

Water, white wine or beer, for deglazing

For dough

2 cups water

Salt

6 cups of all-purpose flour

For serving:

Caramelized onion, sour cream and chopped fresh dill

DIRECTIONS

Make filling. Add sauerkraut, onion, mushrooms, bay leaf and sugar to a wide pan or pot. Stir to combine, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

Cook over medium heat until mixture is cooked down and slightly brown on the bottom of the pan.

Add a splash or two of wine, water or beer to deglaze pan. Repeat until mixture is braised down and all the ingredients are caramelized. Set aside while you make dough.

Prepare dough. Start by putting the 2 cups of water into a large mixing bowl and then salt the water like the ocean.

Add 1 cup of flour at a time and whisk it into the water. After about 2 cups of flour, you will notice the mixture will have a batter consistency and will become a little thicker and hard to use a whisk for.

Switch over to a rubber spatula and start adding flour 1 cup at a time and stirring, scraping the sides, and folding it into the mixture.

Once the dough is thick enough that it’s becoming a shaggy-looking blob, you can flour your work surface and put your shaggy blob onto it. The key is to keep your dough and surface sprinkled with flour at all times to prevent dough sticking to the table.

Knead your dough out with a heavy dusting of flour at a time and form a firm (not soft, but not sticky) ball of dough. You should be able to poke the dough and create a deep print where the dough does not stick to your finger.

Now it’s time to roll out your dough. Pat your ball of dough into a nice flat disk. Make sure it’s dusted with flour. Dust your rolling pin, too. Roll out your dough in all directions but do not force a stretch of any kind.

Dust the rolled out dough with flour. Flip it. Dust it again. Roll it again. The dough should be very thin, but not translucent.

Cut circles into the dough using a thin-edged circular tool such as a water glass or cocktail shaker.

Place about 1 1/2 ounces of your choice of filling into the center of the circle.

Fold one side over, leaving a lip of space between the edge and the filling. This is where you can crimp, fold or braid. Just make sure it’s sealed on the side.

Add your pierogi to a pot of boiling water, being careful not to crowd the pot. Once a minute or two has gone by and the pierogi have floated to the top of the pot, it’s time to sieve them out and lay them on a rack to drain.

In a frying pan, add a couple tablespoons of your preferred high-heat oil. The oil should cover the whole bottom of the pan. Once it is a nice medium-high heat, add pierogi and crisp them up on each side until golden brown.

Serve with caramelized onions, sour cream and fresh dill.

Makes about 48 pierogi.

— Olive Visco, Polska Laska

Related Articles

3 summer cocktail recipes from cocktail influencer Julianna McIntosh

Gretchen’s table: Ancho chile-spiced beef street tacos make for a sweet and spicy treat

Gretchen’s table: Lasagna replaces pasta with low-calorie zucchini

A beginner’s guide to homemade cheese ravioli

Fireworks bundt cake: Confessions of a very amateur baker

You can take the boy out of the Bronx, but you can never take the Bronx out of the boy.

Former St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario, a tireless advocate for the powerless, grew up in the Bronx and earned his journalism stripes working at the New York Daily News.

Rosario – who moved to Minnesota in 1991 and worked at the Pioneer Press for almost 30 years – died Wednesday morning at the M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis, from complications related to multiple myeloma. He was 70.

Rosario, of Rosemount, was “a real journalist – a shoe-leather, go-to-the-scene, get-on-the-phone, ask-the-questions, check-it-out journalist,” said Mike Burbach, the editor of the Pioneer Press and a longtime friend. “He had plenty of opinions, as a columnist should, but he was a journalist first.”

Rosario specialized in writing about public-safety issues and covered some of the most notorious crime cases in New York City and Minnesota, including high-profile organized-crime trials, subway gunman Bernard Goetz, the Etan Patz disappearance, the Central Park jogger murder and controversial police shootings. He once went undercover inside a drug den, smoked crack and wrote a front-page, first-person account of a drug that was then devastating Harlem and other poor, inner-city neighborhoods during the mid-1980s.

“His sense of justice came through in everything he did,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, who got to know Rosario when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn in the late 1980s. “My rule was if Rubén wanted to interview me or talk to me, I always did it. I admired his hard-hitting, get-to-the-bottom-line approach. There were no frills and no nonsense. Every single interaction I had with him was rewarding.”

After five years as city editor and head of the public-safety team at the Pioneer Press, Rosario became a featured columnist in 1997. His first column was about the unsolved murder of Davisha Brantley Gillum, a 4-year-old girl killed a year earlier in a gang-related drive-by shooting at a gas station on St. Anthony Avenue. More than 2,000 other columns followed, including columns on Jacob Wetterling, the Interstate 35W Bridge collapse, and the beating death of 3-year-old Desi Irving.

“But it’s the columns about lesser-known folks that stick with me,” Rosario wrote in 2020. “I wanted to write a column highlighting unheralded ordinary people and issues that deserved more attention or were simmering under the public radar screen. The last thing I wanted to do as a columnist was sit behind a desk and pen easy cheap shots or witty pontifications. Some do this well. But it’s not in me.”

Rosario wrote in 2013 about Gladys Reyes, the young West St. Paul girl who lost her arm and suffered serious injuries when she was struck and dragged by a hit-and-run driver. “Gladys Reyes chose a pink dress with yellowish and red flame-like streaks at the top of the front for her prom dress,” he wrote. “If there’s a girl anywhere who deserves to wear a pretty dress and look like a princess on this special day, it’s this kid. I remembered the first time I saw her more than six years ago. She was lying on a bed at Regions Hospital’s burn unit, pain etched on her 11-year-old face.”

In 2008, Rosario wrote about the unmarked gravesite containing the bodies of six children, ages 5 to 11, who had been found strangled 10 years earlier in St. Paul after their 24-year-old mother, Khoua Her, called 911 to report she had killed them.

During a time when most of the Twin Cities news media were focused on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Rosario interviewed the man who dug the graves of the three boys and three girls. His first sentence: “Pat Hogan will never forget the day he dug a mass grave wide enough to fit the bodies of six children side by side.”

Rosario believed that the “time-honored purpose of journalism was to ‘Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable,’” said Laura Rosario, his wife of 46 years. “He always wanted to make right what was wrong.”

RELATED: Read more of Rubén Rosario’s columns at twincities.com/author/ruben-rosario.

Jonathan Rosario said his father’s commitment to social justice, racial equality and to the people in his community never faltered – whether he was writing in New York City or the Twin Cities. “He wrote his own story by writing about the lives of others,” he said. “People who would have otherwise gone unknown – blips on the radar of life — he brought to the forefront; he turned the lens of identity into front-page news and a spotlight for the voiceless.”

Former Pioneer Press writer David Hanners said Rosario was “a warrior for all that is good in this world.”

“There are a handful of people who set the standard for courage, nobility, ethics, honor, a sense of justice and a keen way with words,” Hanners said. “He was a rare one. He was a crackerjack reporter and writer who had an eye for great detail and a heart that was alternately big and unsparing. He wrote with a streetwise eloquence. He believed in ex-cons trying to lead new lives, and he had little sympathy for uncaring bureaucrats.”

Proud ‘Nuyorican’

Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario in St. Paul, Jan. 23, 2013. (Ben Garvin / Pioneer Press)

Rosario wrote honestly about his own life, too. In a 2013 Pioneer Press column that ran with the headline “Today, I need to tell you about a little boy,” Rosario wrote about how he was sexually abused as a child by an older cousin.

“He was brave in ways most of us are not — not in the physical courage of the moment, but in the longer-lasting courage of personal revelation,” wrote longtime friend and former Pioneer Press writer and editor Les Suzukamo. “He did it not to win awards but to help people — readers — understand the terrible toll of abuse and how pervasive child abuse is and to maybe show a little more compassion for the victims.”

Rosario, a proud “Nuyorican,” a New Yorker of Puerto Rico descent, quickly embraced life in Minnesota after moving here just one month before the famous Halloween Blizzard of 1991, Suzukamo said.

On the night of the blizzard, which dumped 28.4 inches of snow on the Twin Cities, Rosario was on the job working as an editor, Suzukamo said. “He looked a little shell-shocked,” he said. “He was still going through the culture adjustment of moving from New York City to Lake Wobegon. He was getting razzed a bit by the newsroom locals about whether he was enjoying his first Minnesota ‘winter.’ I remember leaning over to him and whispering something like, ‘Don’t worry. This is unusual. It doesn’t snow like this all the time at Halloween.’ I’m not sure he believed me, but it was one of the few times I’ve ever seen that famous ‘Don’t f— with me; I’m from New York’ face wobble a bit.”

Rosario kept his drawn-out Bronx accent – he answered his newsroom phone, “Row … zarr … reeee-o …,” oftentimes while wearing his New York Yankees ballcap. He also kept his New York attitude, which “he wore like a badge of honor,” Suzukamo said. “He used it like a shield and sword. I think it was one of the reasons why he was so good at developing sources, particularly in law enforcement. He wasn’t intimidated by the cops here. If they pushed on him, he shoved right back. Cops respect strength, and Rubén was strong where it counted.”

Rosario, who was bilingual, often volunteered to translate for other reporters in the newsroom. Former Pioneer Press senior editor Art Coulson said Rosario was once tapped to help cover a story about a local man who had drowned in Puerto Rico.

Related Articles

A new multi-sport turf field opens at Jimmy Lee/Oxford Community Center in St. Paul

Best Buy to host Geek Squad camp in Roseville

Dragon Festival returning to St. Paul’s Lake Phalen this Saturday

For all your camel-riding needs: Middle Eastern Festival to take place in West St. Paul on July 13-14

Dakota County Board selects first woman to serve in county’s top role

“When the reporter called the police officer on the case, she found that he spoke only Spanish,” he said. “Rubén stepped in and offered to translate. Rubén put the phone on speaker and asked the first question. The officer responded in Spanish and spoke for two or three minutes. Rubén turned to the reporters and editors gathered ‘round and said, deadpan, ‘He says no comment.’”

Rosario dedicated countless volunteer hours to helping young journalists, working as the intern coordinator at the Pioneer Press and volunteering with the ThreeSixty journalism-mentoring program at the University of St. Thomas. One summer Pioneer Press intern said she learned more about reporting from overhearing him than she’d learned in any journalism class.

Rosario was “dedicated to the underdog in a way only the truly strong can be,” Suzukamo said. “He supported underprivileged young people who overcame immense obstacles to chase their dreams and young reporters and interns in journalism. I think he saw a little of himself in them. I hope they see a little of him in themselves going forward.”

Cancer diagnosis

In 2011, Rosario was diagnosed with terminal-stage multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Long days of “chemo, radiation, and test results that confirmed the incurable nature of his disease” followed the diagnosis, but Rosario’s character shined through, Jonathan Rosario said. “Not once did he complain. Not once did he ask human nature’s usual ‘Why me?’” he said.

In 2020, the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists presented Rosario with a lifetime achievement award. That same year, he published a book of his columns, “Deadline Minnesota.”

Two years later, after more than a decade of hibernation following aggressive chemotherapy, two autologous stem-cell transplants and several hospitalizations to combat pneumonia and other high-risk illnesses, Rosario’s cancer returned. He wrote about the return and his funeral plans in a column published in November 2022.

Left: Rubén Rosario is pictured in 2012 after his initial multiple myeloma diagnosis and treatment. (Ben Garvin / Pioneer Press). Right: Rosario is pictured in November 2022 after a cancer relapse. (Courtesy of Rubén Rosario)

“One of the first things I did was review and update my will, health care directive, beneficiary financial records and cremation/funeral arrangements,” he wrote. “Nothing fancy. My no-frills cherry-red cremation box is patiently waiting in the basement, where it’s been for several years now. My folks will decide service, location and where that box with my ashes will go. The only addendum request was adding two of my favorite pieces of solemn but soul-stirring music — Antonín Dvořák’s New World, Symphony 9, Largo segment, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. If there’s a celebration-of-life gathering, I hope they also throw in Rubén Blades, El Gran Combo, Santana and Earth, Wind and Fire among others to lighten the service playlist, but that’s up to them.”

Rosario grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Fordham University in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He met his wife, Laura Lemons, in 1975 after he finished working his part-time ushering job at Madison Square Garden. Their first date was going to see “Jaws,” she said.

“I believe it was divine intervention that brought us together,” Laura Rosario said. “We were meant to be together. One of the doctors asked him how long he had been married, and he said, ‘Not long enough.’”

The two eloped on March 10, 1978 – in a City Hall ceremony with a justice of the peace – and then married again six years to the day later at St. Columba Catholic Church in New York.

Rosario worked at the New York Daily News from 1976 to 1991 – the newspaper he’d grown up reading. Among his first jobs: copyboy and mail sorter.

“I worked in the same newsroom for a time with the best of the best, columnists who reported their tales and whom I considered my mentors — Pete Hamill, the late Jimmy Breslin, and Juan Gonzalez,” he wrote. “It was like having Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, on the same team, and I was the ball and bat boy.”

Rosario underwent a CAR T-cell procedure in June, but had complications after the surgery, and entered hospice last week.

Related Articles

A ‘second chance’ for St. Paul man sentenced to jail for friend’s fatal overdose in Lake Elmo

A new multi-sport turf field opens at Jimmy Lee/Oxford Community Center in St. Paul

Dragon Festival returning to St. Paul’s Lake Phalen this Saturday

Driver who died in crash that set off fireworks in car ID’d as 22-year-old from St. Paul

Amtrak Borealis topped 18,500 passengers between St. Paul and Chicago in first month

Family members “sent him off with so much love and donned him in true New York fashion – literally,” said Danielle Rosario, his daughter. “He was wearing a Yankees jersey and ball cap. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

In addition to his wife and children, Rosario is survived by his father, Rubén Rosario, and his siblings, Ronald Rivera, Myrna Ortega, Nilda Ferrise and Hector Antonio Rosario.

A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday, July 18, at the Cathedral of St. Paul, with visitation one hour prior at the Cathedral’s St. Joseph Chapel. Burial will be at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights.

The Cremation Society of Minnesota is handling arrangements.

The Louisville Bats scored all their runs in the final three innings, capped by a game-winning homer by Michael Trautwein, to rally for a 6-5 win over the St. Paul Saints on Wednesday in Louisville, Ky.

The Saints led 4-0 entering the bottom of the seventh, getting solo home runs from Yunior Severino, Payton Eeles and Edouard Julien and a run-scoring groundout from DaShawn Keirsey Jr. to back a strong start in a bullpen game.

Scott Blewett, Nick Wittgren and Zack Weiss combined to hold the Bats scoreless on three hits over the first six innings, with eight strikeouts between them.

The Bats started their rally against Josh Winder in the seventh. The first three batters reached base on two singles and a walk, and Tony Kemp, playing in just his second game for the Bats after starting the season with the Saints, drove in a run with a groundout. The Bats added two more against Winder on a P.J. Higgins single and Conner Capel sacrifice fly.

Chris Williams homered for the the Saints in the eighth, but the Bats answered with a run against the Saints’ Matt Bowman off a walk, single and groundout.

In the bottom of the ninth, Saints pitcher Diego Castillo retired the first two Bats batters he faced. He then walked Capel, and Trautwen hit a 94.4 mph fastball to right-center field for the game-winner.

Julien went 3 for 4 with a double, and Anthony Prato was 2 for 3 with his 15th double of the season.

Related Articles

Saints fall after three rain delays shorten game

Saints’ Jair Camargo keeps showing his pop with homer in 4-3 win against Gwinnett

Matt Bowman’s winding baseball journey brings him back to Saints

Williams hits two homers as Saints get back on track with 11-5 win against Gwinnett

Saints feeling the roster crunch once again