In honor of the recent elections in Finland (you mean you weren't paying attention?), I thought it would be fun to take a look at pesäpallo, the Finnish version of baseball. Finns now call it pesis, which I prefer since I don't have to figure out how to type anymore diacritical marks.

The game is played with 12 to a side, although only 9 players are out in the field at any one time. The offense has three DHs available, called jokers in the game. The jokers aren't fixed in the batting order and the manager can use them at his discretion. The rules are relatively complex, although I think they're easier to understand than cricket. The pitcher stands near the batter and tosses the ball in the air and the batter tries to hit it as far as he can. The defense can catch it on the fly for an out or try to throw him out at first. However, the batter doesn't have to run the first two times he hits the ball.

The really weird thing is that the bases aren't in a nice square like baseball, but in a zigzag of sorts. It's usually 20 meters from home to first. Then 32 meters from first to second. Then 36 meters from second to third. And finally 38 meters from third to home. All runners are retired on force plays, sort of.

When I was on vacation with my dad in 1994 we were in Helsinki on a Sunday afternoon. There is pretty much nothing to do in Helsinki on a Sunday afternoon. We had already taken a bus tour of the city. We had walked around. We had been travelling through Europe for two weeks. So we turned on the TV and they were showing highlights of pesis for about an hour.

We came to the same conclusion. We had no idea what the hell these people were doing.

I think it can best be summed up this way:

Pesis on suosituimpia koulupelejä

Kun pelit saadaan käyntiin, liikuntatunnit sujuvat kuin siivillä. Kuitenkin palloon osuminen, heittäminen ja kiinniottaminen räpylällä ovat suorituksia, joiden harjaannuttaminen vaatii paljon harjoitusta. Näiltä sivuilta on tarkoitus löytyä työvälineitä pesistuntien kehittämiseen.

Koulupeleissä voi tehdä sääntösovelluksia, ja niitä kannattaakin tehdä ryhmän osaamisen mukaan. Koulupesissäännöissä on tärkeää edesauttaa sitä, että jokainen saa pelata.

That's from here.

Finnish would be a lot easier to understand if it didn't have 15 different noun cases.

Thanks to joejoejoe for the suggestion.