"Finnish baseball" doesn't quite cover it.

January 26, 2018 9:17 AM

Pesäpallo (aka pesis) is a bat-and-ball sport that was invented in Finland in the 1920s. It's sort of like baseball, except the pitcher stands a couple feet from the batter and then gets the hell out of the way after tossing the ball into the air. And there are other differences. You can learn the rules and see demonstrations in this video, or watch this entertaining and informative video about the history of the sport.

More pesäpallo stuff: The official site of the Finnish league that sponsors the pesäpallo world cup. Articles from New York Times, Boston Globe, and Boston’s NPR station.

posted by goatdog (11 comments total)

Needs more corporate logos.
posted by chavenet at 10:09 AM on January 26, 2018

Neat.. Maybe I missed it in the videos, but the equipment didn't seem covered: what's the ball made of ? (the green color makes it look like a tennis ball, though it isn't).. The gloves look like a US baseball catcher or first baseman mitt, so guessing they are specialized for this sport ? .. And the bats look longer than US baseball bats, but otherwise similar (?) (and wood, or are there metal bats too ? hard to tell/see)
posted by k5.user at 10:22 AM on January 26, 2018

This reminds me somewhat of Brännboll, which a Swedish colleague explained to me as like baseball but a bit different. And then at point he said something about it that made me stop and get him to explain from the beginning, because it was more different than I was expecting.
posted by cardioid at 10:22 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

I should have linked to the Wikipedia article, which addresses some of the technical questions.
posted by goatdog at 10:38 AM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's hard to get a sense in such a shot time. It seems like a combination of really interesting and really weird.
The part about running to 3rd is hard to grasp.
posted by bongo_x at 12:15 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

It seems like a combination of really interesting and really weird.

I lived in Helsinki for a few years. This describes Finland perfectly.
posted by incster at 3:02 PM on January 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

It’s like archaeologists from after the Trump presidency tried to recreate baseball from a burned, radioactive rulebook excavated from a salt flat.
posted by vorpal bunny at 8:54 PM on January 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is fascinating and now I want a team hat.
posted by rhizome at 10:04 PM on January 26, 2018

I love how their World Series logo is a straight up rip of the NBC peacock.
posted by rhizome at 10:12 PM on January 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

rhizome - that logo is actually a part of the sport. There's a multi-coloured fan used to signal plays to the players on base. And we also do have peacocks in Finland.

http://www.pesiksenmaailma.fi/index.php/taktiikkaa-a-tapahtumia/24-johdatus-merkkipeliin-osa-1 (in Finnish but there's a photo of it being wielded to the right).

(Source: I'm Finnish. Pesis is really fun to play as a kid in school and really boring to watch professionally played. Aside from it being homegrown, there is no reason that it's the national sport over ice hockey when it generally requires the pitch not to be under several feet of snow or the weather to generally not be inclement.)
posted by slimepuppy at 7:31 AM on January 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

While looking for more information on the fan, I came across this amusing 1939 account of pesäpallo.
posted by tavella at 11:54 PM on January 28, 2018 [1 favorite]